word count: ~2300
cw: heavily implied psychiatric abuse
important update! i've decided this is the last story i'm gonna be posting on ff. i'm going to keep updating it here because i already started, but when it's done i'm moving entirely to ao3 (where this fic is also being posted) under the name arkhmknights!
Chapter III
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Like its owner, Beacon Hills Animal Clinic was remarkably unassuming in the daylight. Small, bright and virtually unblemished, which was a small miracle considering everything those walls had thrown at them—a hoard of supernatural creatures, usually injured, frequently pissed. Lydia had been all three at different points. Deaton was just waving off a mother-and-daughter pair, carting a calico cat with an Elizabethan collar, when he noticed Lydia's approach; that trademark stillwater smile became mild concern when she stepped close enough for the man to see her face. "Lydia? You're hurt."
Lydia pursed her red lips, waving a hand, an implicit I don't want to talk about it gesture. She'd tidied up a little before driving here (alone, despite Malia's insistence, because hell if she'd would let Malia ruin the streak of good grades Lydia had tutored so hard for by skipping for Lydia's sake)—reapplied makeup, fixed hair, an undamaged dress—but there wasn't exactly much she could do about the glass cuts. They were shallow, anyway. They'd heal soon enough. Not werewolf-quick, but she'd take what she could get. "It's nothing."
Something indecipherable passed behind Deaton's eyes, then he nodded. "I'm afraid Scott won't be here for a few more hours. Unless there was something you needed? How is Prada doing?"
Perfect. No audience. "Prada's fine. The medicine's working." She hesitated, which Deaton sensed as his cue to hold the door open; Lydia ducked into the clinic with a grateful twitch of the head.
"So," he said, surreptitiously switching the sign to closed behind her, "how can I help?"
Logically, Lydia knew the shade of the clinic would be cooler than the sunlight outdoors. Still, her skin didn't register any change; the chill was constant in a way that she couldn't seem to shake, and she had to wonder if the—if Allison—assuming it was Allison—had been trailing her the entire journey, and if she had any choice about it. Lydia worried her hands a little as she wandered further into the hall, unable to totally quell the anxious knot in her throat. For his part, Deaton was calm as always, betraying nothing with his even expression, not even suspicion. Stiles and Malia found his controlled serenity unnerving. Scott found it grounding. Lydia could only be envious.
"How much do you know about banshees?" she said, skipping the preamble.
Deaton barely blinked. "I'll admit, they aren't my expertise. Your kind are far rarer to come by than werewolves."
Don't I feel special. "But you know some things," she pressed, because he had to. She'd consumed everything the bestiary had to say about banshees long ago, which amounted to frustratingly little. Banshees were human women with supernatural senses; beyond that it was usually a familial trait, and that banshee cries could be deadly if wielded correctly (which she hadn't understood, at the time), all the bestiary was concerned with was the fact that banshees had the same physical weaknesses as any ordinary person. Gerard even left a charming footnote: easy prey, if you catch them from behind.
If not Deaton, there was only one other place she could think to seek answers. Like hell was she stepping foot there again.
Deaton braced himself against the reception desk. "I suppose I might be able to offer some information, though I'm not sure it's more than you already know. But why ask now?"
"I've been thinking about the things I hear. Things I've heard, really." She twisted a ring on her right hand. She'd read, somewhere, that the most effective liars told the truth. "At Oak Creek...and Eichen."
He furrowed his brow a little.
"Dozens of people died at Oak Creek. Murdered by the nogitsune. I heard them, when he was keeping me there. Like their voices were trapped in the walls. But that happened seventy years ago." This was the part she'd rehearsed in the car, until she could recite the whole thing with an even detachment which was impressive even for her. "And at Eichen House. I heard voices there, too. Valack's old victims, trying to help me, I think."
"I see. You want to understand how you could hear those things," he said. "Things unrelated to immediate death."
Close enough. She nodded, and after a brief moment's thought Deaton motioned her into his office to sit down with him. He passed her a glass of water without waiting to ask, so icy that the glass condensed immediately, and for the first time in an hour Lydia felt the bite of something colder than she was. She gripped the glass in both hands.
"For all our learning," Deaton began, slowly, "druids can't claim to be experts on death. But life is something we understand. It's a tangible energy, though beyond even scientific understanding. Something which pulses in the earth, through the intersections of ley lines, and in living bodies. On the other side of the coin, death is an energy as well. This is the energy you're drawn to in corpses, Lydia, before that energy dissipates back into the earth."
Lydia focused on the word energy, clung to it like a blanket. Magic was too wispy a concept for her liking, but energy? Energy could be measured. Energy could be quantified. She leaned forward in her chair, elbows against her thighs, as Deaton kept going.
"Places like Oak Creek—where an abundance of death happens in a relatively short time—can become saturated with that energy, so that it doesn't fade as quickly. It lingers."
Lydia turned the glass in her fingers, frowning at the rippling surface. "So," she said, "this...energy. It's what's left of people who've died."
"Exactly."
"Like a soul."
"In a way, yes."
Souls and ghosts. Same idea, different packaging. Lydia did her best to ignore the quickening of her pulse and the tightness of her chest as she forced herself to pause, as if a thought were just occurring to her. "So if this energy goes back to the earth, that means it still exists somewhere. The people still exist."
Deaton hesitated. "In theory."
"In theory?"
It no longer felt like her own breath in her throat. Something like nails dug into her shoulder, a shiftless weight leaning over her, listening even more intently than Lydia was. It made her nauseous, made her skin tight and crawling. She took a swig of ice water and fought not to shake or bend under the gravity, but she felt pale. Very pale.
"You need to realise that death is not a well understood thing. Like I told you, druids specialise in life energy, not its opposite. Even among banshees, or those we know about, it's unheard of to have enough power to perceive through the veil between life and death. To be sensitive, powerful enough to sense individual souls, if they still exist in any self-conscious way." Deaton laced his fingers together. His furrowed brow bordered on concern—the last thing she wanted to deal with. "Lydia, are you alright?"
Energy-soul-life-death-opposite—her mind ached, straining beneath so many thoughts, her migraine threatening revenge. It took some force to drag herself back to Deaton's question. A blink, a swallow, eyes drifting to meet the veterinarian's; her lips parted and she responded in a voice which seemed distant, somehow. Disconnected. "I'm fine."
"Are you...planning something?"
Her hackles rose, just a little. "I'm not an idiot," she said cooly, which was the truth.
Not an idiot. Just the wrong goddamn girl with the wrong goddamn ability. Just a beacon for death, drawing it in like moth to flame, hovering and beating and closer and dauntless. Just a girl who spoke a language she wished she didn't. Power, it came back to power again, it always came back to power. Power which found Lydia whether she chased it or not.
What would be the point in planning anything? The dead always landed on her doorstep sooner or later, with or without her help, and they always had something to declare.
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Eichen House was, in her mind, a black and smudgy thing.
Her memories of the place (of its special unit) fractured and spun and flaked elusively to the touch, which was either a good thing or bad thing depending on Lydia's lurching mood. She resented the yawning black hole in her memories, the days and days lost to hazy fear without comprehension—until she snatched a glimpse of those days (a flare of pain, or a churning drill, or Aiden's smile), and became abruptly, intensely grateful not to know more. Some pasts were best left there.
She remembered enough, though, to string it all together.
After the woods—after Theo's claws scraping the base of her skull—there were voices, bleeding panic into the air. She didn't know what they were panicking about. Lights flickered above her and she stared and stared and stared but couldn't find the pattern. They were trying to tell her something. They were trying to tell her something. The light blinked through her. Pried her apart and strung her across the examination table—pieces of her pinned and fluttering and labelled this part girl that part graveyard that part Allison—
(Who?)
This girl wasn't Allison. Her eyes were too wide and her hair too tight and coily but as Lydia lay immobile, she slowly wrapped her hands around Lydia's neck and squeezed and squeezed until a scream came out.
Because Malia was in danger.
It was her only rock in the storm. Malia needs help.
So she screamed. The lights popped and rained glass down her face but Malia was running and so was Lydia—two girls' legs wheeling in unison, feet beating the forest floor and they swatted men aside like flies. Malia's growl tore Lydia's throat.
Malia broke away.
Lydia didn't.
Before Lydia could understand why, she was underground again—shackled and buried. Her jailor murmured soothing words as he twisted the knife into her head until it cut clean through.
It was like a dam crumbling. Or a tsunami, collapsing. Or smashing glass.
Just like that, she could hear everything.
Her skull became a cavern of anguished screams, fighting to escape first—an entire fucking world bleeding out at her feet. Voices of the dead and voices of the dying and voices of people still alive, people she knew, but not for long. Oh God, not for long. Oh God. Oh God.
Somewhere among the din, a pair of hands pushed through. For a moment—one tiny moment—they swept the noise aside, their fingers a feather-light touch on Lydia's cheeks, and Lydia wheeled her teary gaze up to the face they belonged to. The eyes.
Hold on Lydia. I'm so sorry, just, please, hold on a little longer. They're coming to get you.
Lydia parted her lips. She tasted salt. With her mouth she shaped, "Promise?"
I promise.
She choked back a sob. She grabbed their hand.
She held on.
She held on.
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"Did you find what you need?"
Lydia had been bracing herself for that voice, but it still came as a cold shock. She shuddered, though didn't turn around, too aware that Deaton might still be watching from the windows. She might have imagined it, but he seemed a little suspicious (which was always a risk, but a calculated one—Deaton wouldn't say anything, not without anything concrete). She opened her car door without another word, stepping inside and starting the engine.
She sensed Allison move into the passenger seat. More specifically, she felt the air inches to her right drop drastically in temperature; clenching her jaw, she activated the car heater as she pulled out of the car park.
"Can't you at least look at me?" Allison said.
"What's to look at?"
"God, Lydia, please. I feel like I'm going insane."
"Oh! You feel like you're going insane!" Lydia snapped, keeping her eyes glued to the road ahead. Her voice climbed shrilly, her grip on the wheel white-knuckled, and she was skirting a little too close to the speed limit. "That must be so hard for you!"
They lapsed into tense silence. It gave Lydia a moment to slow her breath and relax her fingers, to try to focus on feeling the warmth of the car. It almost worked. Almost, but not quite.
When Allison spoke again, her voice was small.
"I don't...I don't feel real. Please, Lydia, look at me."
Lydia's stomach twisted. Because you're not real, she thought—but without conviction, because suddenly Allison sounded so tired. A kind of post-funeral, post-shattering tired. It flung her back to the early days—before the pack, before the nogitsune or the darach—to Allison, in black, after her mother's death. Angry and weary and distant. Lydia tasted it on the back of her tongue, Allison's emotions tangling with her own.
She stopped at a red light. Exhaling slowly, she peered at Allison out of the corner of her eye.
Allison sat all in black again, hands fisted against her knees, arms rigid; her eyes were wide and frightened. In Lydia's peripheral vision, Allison almost looked alive.
"Did you find what you need?" she asked again, and this time Lydia heard the double meaning. Did you find out what's happening to me?
Lydia opened her mouth to speak, but had to stop. Her throat was suddenly, painfully thick. She tried to clear it as the light flashed green, Deaton's parting words playing on her mind: Death is a dark and dangerous energy, Lydia. You of all people should know it's nothing to play with. I won't say it's wrong of you to look for answers, but be careful how deep you go to find them. "I'm not sure. But...I think I have a theory."
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