Clear blue water
High tide came and brought you in
And I could go on and on, on and on
And I will
Skies grew darker
Currents swept you out again
And you are just gone and gone, gone and gone
"I hate him!" She screamed, grabbing a handful of her strawberry blonde hair. Her green eyes shone with tears as she paced back and forth in front of the burning fire place.
"Oh, sweetheart... Sit down and try to breathe, okay?" His eyes shone with sympathy. He wanted to take her pain, even though he knew that it was inevitable. He knew that this was just something that happens, a painful part of life.
She sat down beside him and buried her face in his arm, tears streaking down her face. "I just wish that it would stop! I just... Love isn't worth it!"
"Oh, honey, you stop that right now." He took her face in his hands, brought her face to look at him. "Honey, let me tell you something. Love is always worth it."
"Even unrequited love? Because it's a bitch."
A smile quirked his lips, as he thought back.
Hey, Lydia. You look... like you're going to ignore me.
"Let me tell you a secret." Stiles Stilinski tilted his eye glasses down more and lifted his eyebrows, his dark eyes searching into his granddaughter's piercing green eyes. "Unrequited love can be the greatest love you will ever feel. Because it's the most selfless love you will ever get to experience. It hurts and it bleeds and it makes you wish you were dead. But it gives you the chance, the real and true chance, to really learn what it is to put another person before yourself. But you never know when sparks will fly."
Just kill me. Look, I don't care anymore! Just don't hurt her!
And if you die, I will literally go out of my freaking mind.
You look beautiful when you cry.
Well, I think you look beautiful.
Stiles leaned back into the old sofa and let out a small sigh. "The greatest love I ever knew... She didn't even know I existed."
His granddaughter rolled he eyes- the sight made him smile because of how often he and Lydia would do that very thing. "Please. Grandpa, I'm not stupid. You've only loved- Oh. Oh. What?! Really? Grandma... It was unrequited?"
"You've never heard this?" Stiles's eyes sparked. "I could have sworn I had just told this story to someone..."
"That was Jimmy, dear." Lydia leaned over, planting a kiss on her husband's cheek. "This is Rebecca."
And now Stiles rolled his eyes again and looked at his wife with a fond annoyance. "I know who this is, Lyra." Lydia's green eyes sparked with concern until Stiles gave her a smile, eyebrows lifting. "Don't worry, Lyds. I'm teasing." He kissed her hand. "I'm not that old. And neither are you, my dear, so don't start sweating it yet. We've overcome far worse, remember."
A small smile pulled at Lydia's lips. "Mm. Trust me, I remember. I mean, how could I forget you showing up to check on me when I missed school?"
"Or you calling me Jackson because you were high?" Stiles teased.
Lydia gave a small laugh. "You tripping over nothing because you saw me in the woods."
"Oh, we're playing dirty now." Stiles's eyes sparked with mischief, a familiar look indeed for Lydia. "That sorry excuse you came up with for why you kissed me."
Lydia's jaw fell open, a grin pulling at her face, lighting her green eyes. "Oh! You insufferable man!" Stiles roared with laughter as Lydia hit his shoulder lightly. "It worked and you know it! Sorry excuse! Next time I'll just leave you there! See if you think it's such a sorry excuse then. Oh! You sorry excuse of a-"
Stiles slid his hand to his wife's cheek, pulling her down to him and kissing her softy, quickly, gently, lovingly. "Care to finish now?"
"Cheater," she whispered fondly.
"I never played fair," he whispered back. "I just managed to figure it out."
"You were the one to always figure it out..."
"Only because I had you to guide me," Stiles murmured, looking into her eyes. "My emotional tether..."
She smiled again, her hand gently stroking the side of his face. "It was a pleasure to pull you back..."
Rebecca smiled softly as she watched them. "It's hard to believe this was ever unrequited..."
"It's hard for me to believe too." Lydia smiled at him. "I don't know what I would have done without him." She planted a kiss on his forehead and moved into the kitchen.
"Oh, stay! Where are you going?" he complained after her.
"To hide Rebecca's cookies from you."
Stiles pouted silently after his wife. "I can control myself," he muttered to himself.
"So, grandpa... Tell me more. I want to know the story." Rebecca pulled a blanket into her lap and looked up at him.
Stiles smiled. "Well, Rebecca. It's a long story. In it... I had some moments that I'm not proud of, where I should have done things differently."
"Would you change them?"
"Heavens no. I wouldn't change one thing. One thing might have changed our ending here." He smiled at her. "There's a reason we aren't born fearless. If I had been just a little braver... Well, things would have been different."
"How so?" Rebecca asked, watching her grandfather curiously.
"Well... See, I would have stayed. But I was too afraid."
"Afraid of what?"
Stiles smiled. "We're getting ahead of ourselves. See, our story starts with a little boy who told his sick mother that he was going to marry a little girl in his class."
"You knew then?"
"I did. I had a crush on your grandmother since the third grade." He smiled to himself, thinking of their lives together. "I knew that it was her."
"How?" she asked.
Stiles smiled at her. "I'm not entirely sure. I think I needed it to be her so much that... It was. But, we're getting off topic again. See, this is not the story of how I fell in love with her."
Rebecca blinked. "It's not?"
"No, my dear." Stiles leaned forward, his eyes twinkling with mischief again. "This is the story of how I got the girl."
Your kiss, my cheek
I watched you leave
Your smile, my ghost
I fell to my knees
When you're young
You just run
But you come back
To what you need
This love is good, this love is bad
This love is alive back from the dead, oh
These hands had to let it go free
And this love came back to me, oh
This love left a permanent mark
This love is glowing in the dark, oh
These hands had to let it go free
And this love came back to me, oh
A/N: Wow, you guys I really hope you liked this... I enjoyed writing it and my, oh, my will I miss it. I literally cannot express how sad I am at the thought of not continuing. I'd been putting off the eopilogue under the excuse that I couldn't get it right. I just didn't want to say goodbye.
But here we are. Thank you for staying with me. I know it was a long journey.
I don't know if you caught it... But there were a few chapter titles hidden in this chapter. I was going for all of them but it was getting too forced.
A couple more bits of news...
One- Eventually, I'm going to do a rewrite. I'm going to add chapters, flesh them out, add detail, and so on. But I am going to take a break for a while first.
Two- I am now going to start posting my other fics more often or (to tumblr) for pretty much the first time except a few exceptions. Please look out for Please, Stay, He Said, She Said, What If This Storm Ends? (which is going VERY slow in all honesty), and any others that I am lucky enough to write.
Thank you guys. I hope you enjoyed this half as much as I enjoyed writing it.