CHAPTER 6

Lydia was in the middle of a party. A rager from what she could tell. There were teenagers everywhere, the music was loud, and people were clearly drunk. "Scott?" she said, looking around. "Scott?" she said louder, scanning around the pool. Wait. The pool, she knew that pool, it was her pool. This must be one of her famous parties. Which one? She looked closely at the people that surrounded her and noticed most of them weren't holding the classic red cups, but instead held clear plastic glasses containing a pink punch with a distinctive purple flower floating at the top of each one. Lydia's heart lurched as she remembered this particular party. It had been her birthday and she essentially poisoned everyone, causing them to hallucinate while she resurrected Peter, the alpha that had nearly killed her a few months prior. Just then she spotted Scott and Stiles walking towards her. "Scott!" she yelled, trying to get his attention, but he didn't hear her. Something was off about him though; his hair was longer. Only then did her gaze fall upon Stiles. His hair was short, a crew cut, as it had been for years before he had decided to grow it out the past year. She'd almost forgotten how young he looked with all his hair chopped off. "Scott there you are I've been looking for-"

"Lydia! Lydia over here!" Lydia looked in the direction she had just come from to find Scott rushing towards her. Wait a second. She looked back towards the Scott walking towards her talking to Stiles, and then towards the one running towards her. Huh. Well this was totally bizarre. Clearly the one running was the real Scott since he could see her, and she stood there as he reached her. "Where were you? I was calling for you" She asked.

"I woke up on the other side of the house. No clue why. This was your birthday party right? I still remember hallucinating Allison and Jackson making out here. That was disturbing." Scott zoned out for a second as his nose scrunched up in disgust. Lydia raised an eyebrow at him, and he stared at her for an awkward few seconds before clearing his throat. "Right- changing the subject. So why are we here?" Lydia nodded in the direction of younger Scott and Stiles. "Whoa- I've never seen me from the outside! How weird. So I guess this is what it would be like to have a twin right?" Scott bounded over to his younger self and slowed his pace to match his younger self. He began pointing between him and his younger self while shooting a goofy grin at Lydia, who rolled her eyes and whispered "boys…" under her breath. The younger boys were close enough for Lydia to overhear them.

"You okay?" Stiles asked Scott. He shrugged. "It's not the moon, it's different."

"Is that what I really sound like?" Scott asked, stepping next to Lydia. "It's not the moon it's different" he said in an exaggerated husky voice. He started cracking up at himself until a commotion disrupted his laughter.

"..What are you an idiot? I just came from a funeral; you know people wear black at funerals! Get out of my face."

"Mr. Stilinski? What the hell? He wasn't here, was he Scott?" Lydia stated, confused.

"No, he wasn't. And he never gets drunk, let alone in public…" Scott said, sobering up a little in his confusion. The sheriff looked just past their direction at Stiles, who had paused right behind Scott. He raised the bottle of whiskey in his right hand and gestured in his sons direction.

"It's you. It's allllll you." He said "You know every day, I saw her lying in that hospital, slowly dying. I thought how the hell am I supposed to raise this stupid kid on my own. This hyperactive little bastard that keeps ruining my life!" He words were harsh, and Scott flinched as he looked at his best friend. The hurt on his face was plain, but what cut through Scott was that he didn't look all that surprised. Almost like he always suspected his dad felt this way.

"Scott- please tell me this didn't really happen." Lydia said in horror.

"I- I don't think so. I think this was Stiles's hallucination from the wolfs bane but- he never told me about it. I didn't even know he had hallucinated, I just knew he got trashed because I was the one who had to sober him up. I suspected but… never told me.

"It's all you. It's you Stiles." Mr. Stilinski snarled with disgust. Scott saw Stiles and noticed tears were starting to form in his eyes. "You killed your mother. You hear me? You killed her. And now you're killing me." With that, he drew back his hand and whipped the bottle of Whiskey towards his son. Scott instinctively shot in front of Stiles to protect him from getting hit with the bottle. Before it could hit either of them it disappeared, and the sounds of disorderly teenagers and loud music once again filled the air. Lydia was staring at Stiles as he wiped the tears from his face and went to find a drink. She turned to Scott with a guilty expression. "I did that to him." She whispered. "I put the wolfs bane in the drinks, I made people hallucinate. I made him see that."

Scott grabbed her shoulders. "Lydia it's not your fault. You had a lunatic dead werewolf alpha in your head threatening you. And you know Stiles, he rubs it off. He'll be fine. He was fine. I think." The world around them started to dim. Remembering how they were separated last time, Lydia grasped for Scotts hand as everything changed.

…

When they opened their eyes, they were back at the school, but it was early, the sun was just coming up. Lydia took her hand from Scotts and turned to face him. "I didn't get a chance to tell you last time we were here but, I think I know what's going on. Back in the library I commented how last time we had a test and you asked how we find Stiles in his own memories, right? Well, what if this is the test? Last time the nogitsune was trying to keep us away from Stiles, but what if everything we're seeing, all these memories, are his defense mechanism?"

"How can going through these memories be a defense mechanism?"

"Well in all of these memories we can touch items in the rooms, but not the people, right? And not Stiles, whose head we're in. So what if a part of his subconscious senses us, but doesn't recognize us? He could be throwing these memories at us as a way to keep us away from him. As a way to protect himself from any intrusions. If there's a part of him that remembers Theo digging around in here, he could think we're doing the same thing. He's hiding from us. I think these memories are a way to protect himself and prevent us from finding him."

Scott nodded, thinking. But he looked worried. "But if he is hiding from us, then how do we find him? If he's going through his memories, how will we know when it's really him and not just another memory?"

"Well we'll probably be able to touch him when we find him. Hopefully it'll be a little more obvious like the white room, but we'll just have to test every Stiles we run into just in case." Just as she spoke, Stiles entered the room, keys tapping against his other hand nervously. He looked down at a strange key that Scott didn't recognize, and placed it into the chemistry closet lock. He paused before twisting it and pushing open the door. He stood there, dread leaking into his features before turning around and approaching the chalk board, where Scott saw numbers with letters next to them spelling KIRA. As he passed her, Lydia reached out and attempted to grab his shoulder, but again, it went right through him. She looked up at the board and tilted her head to the side. "I remember that. That's how Stiles and I figured out that Barrow was after Kira. He got a coded message made from atomic numbers spelling out her name."

"I didn't believe him…"

"What?" Lydia said, looking back at Scott in curiosity. He nodded at the board as Stiles picked up a piece of chalk and wrote the numbers 19, 53, 88 next to the ones that were already there. They were clearly written in the same hand.

"He tried to tell me. Later that day he came back to show me the board but it was gone, so was the key to the chemistry closet. He tried to tell me that he thought it was somehow him who had written the message to Barrow to kill Kira. He knew something was up before anyone. But I basically just told him he had to be wrong and to go home and get some sleep. He had sensed the nogitsune was in him, and I didn't believe him. Why do I never believe him?"

"Scott no one would have believed that Stiles was killing people. Not until there was more proof. Maybe you should have taken him more seriously, but it's not a bad thing that you believed the best in your friend."

"You don't understand, Stiles has been right before, but I never listen. He was the first person to suspect that the nogitune was inside him, even if he didn't know exactly what, he knew something was wrong with him. And Matt? Stiles suspected it was him killing people from the beginning. His excuse was that he just didn't like him but he couldn't explain why. Don't you see? He had this gut feeling, and I ignored it. Just like with Theo. He didn't trust him from day one, and I kept rubbing it off but he was right! Again! What the hell kind of friend am I?" Scott gripped his hair in frustration.

Lydia grabbed his arms and yanked them out of his hair. "You're the type of person who gives people a second chance. Someone who doesn't judge a person right away. Yes, Stiles was right. He probably has extremely good intuition about people because he grew up around cops, which is an amazing and rare thing to have. But just because you trust people easier and are always willing to give people second and third chances doesn't mean you're a bad person, or a bad friend. Stiles knows that. He is extra careful about trusting people as a way to protect you, because you're so busy protecting everybody else." The classroom started to go dark and they both knew what was next. Lydia fixed Scott with a glare. "Now stop moping around and pitying yourself because we have a job to do in here. Your existential crisis will have to wait. Ready for the next one?"

Before he had a chance to answer, they were already there.