Strange Terrain

Chapter 3 – Lost and Found

"If you aren't in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret." – Jim Carrey

She was still standing there in the middle of the empty living room of her apartment when he came back to check if there was anything else they needed to put into the van. Stiles approached her slowly, looking around as if he was just seeing it for the first time.

"It looks a lot bigger when there's nothing in it," he said, eliciting a small laugh from his girlfriend.

"It's how it looked when I came to check it out, that day you gave me a ride to my meeting with the landlord," Malia explained, looking over at him. "I only lived here for a little over six months, the air conditioning never worked, and I swear my neighbors lost the remote to their television," she laughed again, shaking her head, "and yet it's still kind of sad to be leaving."

Stiles put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned her head on his. "Yeah, but think of this – you now get to wake up next to me every night instead of having to commute back and forth all the time."

She rolled her eyes, a grin forming on her lips. "You're an idiot."

"Yes, but I'm your idiot, remember?" Stiles replied, pulling her to him and capturing her lips with his. She kissed him back with a sigh, before finally looking up at him.

"Okay. Sentimental moment has passed. Let's get out of here."

She didn't wait for him to respond, turning on her heel and tugging him along after her. He laughed and let her lead the way out of the apartment, and toward their future together.

It had taken some serious thinking and time and a little encouragement from Erica – who seemed to have decided to camp out at his apartment for the past week – for Stiles to finally figure out what he needed to do. He wasn't giving up on his wife, but he wasn't making any progress in the hey-remember-me-your-husband department either.

"You have to keep going to see her," Erica had insisted, even though she herself had decided that gluing her butt to his thrifted couch and day-drinking was more interesting than reliving her childhood.

Stiles suspected that she only encouraged him so much because she saw his life as her entertainment; it was like a reality television show and she just couldn't wait to see the outcome of it all. Would she fall for him or wouldn't she? Stay tuned.

He exhaled heavily, staring out of the windshield of his Jeep as the rain pelted the glass from outside. He had been sitting there for almost twenty minutes, the radio off, the dull pounding of the rain putting him in a trance as he contemplated starting the car and driving back home. But he also thought of the fact that Malia's family – a family he had never even known existed until a week ago – was probably in there, day and night, nursing her back to health. He had been the one by her side for months before she'd woken up, but that was just the thing – she hadn't been awake. She had no recollection of him retelling old stories of their life together, holding her hand, watching her with a pained look on his face as the doctors still had no straight answer for him.

She didn't know, and she would never believe him if he tried to tell her.

She didn't know who he was at all.

From what he had discerned, and what the doctors had figured out over the past week, Malia had lost all memory of the past few years, enough that she didn't even remember moving clear across the country. In fact, despite the fact that the looks on her parents' faces were at times stressed, she didn't even seem to think they were all that bad, meaning that something had happened between them that had lit the fuse.

Something that she no longer remembered.

He couldn't change that, especially since he didn't know very much about her family or her life before she had moved to Beacon Hills, but he could try and fix the one thing he cared about more than anything: his marriage.

Stiles turned off the car and pulled the keys out of the ignition, getting out and heading across the parking lot to the building. He was soaked even in the two minutes that it had taken to get inside, but he didn't really feel it, letting his feet lead him down the same path he had walked so many times in the past few months to her room. He did what he always did – tried to think of something that he could talk about, something that might trigger some old feelings or memories that were being suppressed. For the past couple of days, he had tried everything – telling stories, showing her their wedding photos, even bringing her coffee from Bobby's, the shop where they had first met. But nothing worked.

And yet he still made himself show up. Showing up was half the battle, his dad always said.

When he walked into the room, he immediately noticed that something was different. The room was brighter, cleaner, and Malia was out of bed. She had taken to walking around recently, so that much didn't surprise him – it was the fact that her bed had been made, tucked tight with sharp corners and the pillows arranged neatly at the head, that threw him off. When he looked around, Stiles found Malia standing by the window, dressed in an oversized cardigan and distressed jeans. It was all so surreal.

"Are you leaving?" He asked, his voice cracking slightly in the middle of his question, hoarse from lack of use. Stiles cleared his throat, shoving his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.

Malia looked up at him – the same, detached look that she had given him since she'd warmed up to him, a look someone would give to a friendly stranger; he bristled – and shrugged. "Oh, yeah. I guess I am," she told him. "I'd been meaning to tell you… I felt like you should know… I don't really know why…" Malia shook her head, touching the spot on her forehead where she had a long scar extending from her hair line halfway to her eyebrow. "I've been released."

Stiles' face lit up. "That's great!" He said almost too excitedly. "I mean, you should have told me sooner, but it's fine. Everything at the apartment is exactly the way it was when you – you –" He wanted to say 'left', but that didn't really fit.

"Stiles," she said gently, moving towards him slowly. He frowned, not liking the tone that she used. Like she was about to tell him something he wouldn't want to hear. "I'm actually going home. Like, home, home."

"You mean… You're going back to New York?" The words were thick in his mouth. He felt like he was going to throw up. "But you can't. You haven't lived there in almost four years – this is your home!"

"I knew you were going to say that," Malia replied, shaking her head. "I shouldn't have told you. I don't even know why I did."

Stiles walked towards her, almost grabbing her shoulders, but refraining. "You told me because you care about me. Somewhere, deep down inside of yourself, you know you cared about me once. You can feel it. I know you can."

"No. I don't know you –"

"Yes you do! You met me at a coffee shop called Bobby's, and two days later I took you on our first date. It was to my favorite pizza place in Beacon Hills. It was snowing when we first kissed, that same night."

Malia shoved him away from her, shaking her head. "Stop. Just stop. I don't want to hear any more of your stories –"

"They're true –"

"Get out – Nurse! – I want you to shut up and get out!"

Stiles felt his blood pressure rising, wanting to yell back at her but knowing that he shouldn't. The doctors had told him not to press her too hard, since it might upset or frustrate her. Yelling at her would only make things worse…

He took a deep breath and suddenly, something clicked. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and quickly navigated to what he wanted, moving cautiously toward her again but allowing a wide berth.

"Listen to this," Stiles insisted, holding out the phone. Malia opened her mouth to protest, her face red with impatience, but he interrupted her before she could protest. "Just listen to this and I'll go. If you want me to, I will."

Malia just looked at him for a long moment, not saying anything, not moving. She searched his face, considering, before finally sighing and, shaking her head, taking the phone from him. She held it up to her ear and listened. Stiles watched her, holding his breath the way he always did when he showed her something in the hopes of it making a world of difference. For a while, her face remained impassive, even a little impatient. But the longer she listened, the more her expression changed, the more it softened. And he knew then that something big was about to happen.

When she was done, she stared at the phone, before looking up at him again. "That was my voice," she said. "I – why did I send that to you?" She seemed genuinely intrigued.

Stiles exhaled, then swallowed hard, preparing to speak. "A few months after we started dating, we got into a really big fight. Like, earth-shatteringly big. We both said a lot of things we didn't mean, and long story short you felt like the biggest fuck-up ever" – Malia let a laugh escape her involuntarily, clearly recalling the phrase from the message – "and left me that voice message in the middle of the night." He shrugged. "Of course, I forgave you. A few weeks after that, we moved in together."

"Wow," was all Malia could manage to say, finally allowing herself to absorb what he had to say.

The stories, they were just that. Stories. The pictures could have easily been Photoshopped – they did live in a digitally complex world, after all. But this – hearing her own voice on the phone of a guy she really did not believe she knew – it felt real. For the first time since she'd woken up, something about this guy felt real.

She handed his phone back, before sighing again. "Okay," she said. "I won't go back to New York."

"What?" Stiles blurted, caught off guard.

"You heard me," Malia replied. "If we were really together like you say we were, I want to try and figure it all out and I can't do that if I'm on the other side of the country."

Stiles just blinked, unable to form the words that he wanted to say fast enough. She was moving around the room, throwing her scarce belongings into a small overnight bag, before moving past him toward the door. It was only then that he turned and said, "Wait, where are you going?"

She stopped, looking back at him with her hand on the door frame. "To tell my parents that I'm staying with you." And then she was gone.

But this time he wasn't worried because he knew she would be back. And he wasn't about to lose her again.