Lydia was angry.
She was very good at controlling her temper, but when she did get angry, it was bad. Her mind got extremely focused, and she got shit done. She had just gotten attacked by a snake with legs, stood up by Jackson, and saved by Derek (making the ratio uneven between them yet again). Everything added up to giving her a temper. Stomping down the hallway and out into the quad, she found Allison and grabbed her, bodily pulling her along until they were alone in a classroom away from the rest of the students. Allison pulled away from her, frowning and protesting.
"Lydia, what is wrong with you?" she asked, stepping away from her friend and straightening her clothes. Crossing her arms over her tiny chest, Lydia set her feet firmly and fixed Allison with a penetrating glare.
"You need to forget about killing Derek, plain and simple," she stated matter-of-factly. Allison rolled her eyes and shook her head, turning to leave.
"You don't understand, Lydia. Just stay out of it."
"No. You don't understand, Allison," she retorted, drawling out the other girl's name and grabbing her arm to keep her from leaving the room. "About fifteen minutes ago, I got stood up by Jackson, almost got killed by a man-eating lizard, and Derek saved my life. Needless to say, my afternoon is not going well. But that's not the point: Derek didn't kill your mother, she killed herself, Allison. You can't blame him for something that was entirely her choice."
The rage glowed in Allison's eyes as her hands dropped to her sides when she heard Lydia's words. She stepped forward, her angular jaw clenching tightly in umbrage.
"You have no idea what you're in the middle of, Lydia," the black-haired girl hissed, pointing a long finger at her. "You're just talking off the top of your head without knowing what you're talking about!" She gestured wildly over her head as she spoke, her arms flailing about indignantly.
"Then tell me what I'm missing! Because I'm not seeing how I'm missing anything. You're the one who can't see the truth through your own hatred for a man who hasn't done what you think he did!"
Allison pursed her lips in an angry smile and shook her head, her brown eyes focusing intently on Lydia. "Fine. You want to know? I'll tell you everything.
"That lizard that attacked you? That IS Jackson, and Derek's the one who turned him. He bit him and turned him into that thing. That is his fault. That's why he saved you: because he feels guilty for turning Jackson - your ex-boyfriend - into a killer, a monster. Matt wasn't the one who killed those people at the police station: Jackson was, but it's not him, it's that monster he's become. You can thank Derek for that."
Allison spat the words and left them hanging between the two of them, leaving Lydia stunned. Jackson hadn't stood her up... He had baited her into the locker room and he was going to kill her. But he'd wanted to know something first: what Peter's plan was. She hadn't told him, so she'd survived. And Derek had seemed to show up at a rather opportune time. He'd claimed he could hear her heartbeat, but why had he been there in the first place? Then she remembered something else he'd said: "I was already tracking Ja-... the kanima and you happened to lead me right to him." He'd been about to say Jackson's name - she knew now - but he'd caught himself. He'd admitted he was tracking the boy. He wasn't just a knight in shining armor; he was protecting the monster he'd created.
She was so stunned she didn't notice as Allison turned and stormed out of the classroom, leaving her alone to wallow in the reality that was her tempest of a life.
Stumbling blindly from the tears that clouded her eyes and the betrayal, the anger she felt, Lydia shoved through the doors into Derek's hideout. "Derek!" she screamed in fury. "Derek, show your face, you lying bastard!" Her voice turned into a shriek, and she choked it down, the sound morphing into a sob as she plunged toward the derelict bus.
Her Jackson was a monster. It was all Derek's fault, and he'd led her to believe she was the one at fault here. She'd only started talking to him because of Peter's stupid plan, his stupid commands, and she'd defended him. She'd stood up for him to her own best friend, had believed he wasn't the antagonist. But he was. He'd turned Jackson into that thing, that murderous beast that had come inches away from taking her life. Her Jackson would never do that. He may be a jerk, but he wouldn't kill people. He wouldn't kill her.
"DEREK!" she screamed again, almost tripping on the uneven floor and yelling in frustration and desperation.
Suddenly, he was right in front of her, his ice blue eyes glaring down at her. She was sobbing so violently she could barely stand upright, but the sight of him rankled her. Lunging toward him, she began beating her tiny fists on his chest and raging at him, knowing inwardly that she would never hurt him but hoping she could. "You liar! You asshole! You turned him into that thing. You made him a monster. My Jackson... He would never..."
Her sobs broke into her words and her tongue felt too thick to speak. She slammed her fist into his hard, broad chest until her muscles began to ache and the sadness began overwhelming the rage. Finally, Derek grabbed her wrists as she began to sink to her knees, and he drug her up into the bus, setting her in one of dirty old seats. Burying her head in her hands, her shoulders racked with sobs. No wonder Jackson had started hating her. He was a monster; he didn't know what he was doing.
"You know," Derek stated simply, lacing his fingers together, his elbows resting on his knees.
She glared up at him, her mascara having run down her face and her cheeks red from too much crying. Her eyes burned, and her heart felt as if it might explode from sorrow. "You made him a monster." The words were full of her hatred for him, but he didn't flinch. Instead he looked up at her, fixing her with his blue eyes.
"No, I didn't. I bit him because he asked me - begged me - to. I never knew he would become a kanima. I had no way of knowing."
"You should have known! You shouldn't have done it!" she protested, smacking the palms of her hands hard down on the top of the seat in front of her.
"How could I have known?!" he asked incredulously, tossing his hands up in the air in exasperation. "I didn't know his parents died before he ever knew them. I didn't even know for sure that he was kanima at first, and even then, I didn't know it was him. We all believed the bite hadn't turned him, that he was somehow immune to it like you were."
Shaking her head, she crossed her arms and looked away from him, through the dingy windows of the bus. Derek sighed and leaned over onto his knees once more.
"He's a kanima, and he doesn't control his actions. He has a master, and it's Allison's grandfather," he informed her, bringing her attention back to his face in disbelief. "It was Matt, but after he died, somehow Gerard became his master. He tells him what to do, who to kill. When he's not the kanima, he doesn't remember any of it or even believe that he changes."
He looked at her out of the tops of his eyes, sighing slightly as she regarded him in silence. "If that makes you feel any better... I've been trying to figure out how to change it, how to save him. Scott doesn't want to kill him, and I don't really either since, like you said, he's my responsibility. But I don't know how. I'm a werewolf, I have no idea what a kanima thinks or how to transform one into something else."
She didn't want to speak to him at first, but what he said made sense. He seemed sincere when he said he hadn't done this to Jackson on purpose, and she had a good sense of honesty. Derek may be brooding and grouchy, but he was an honest person from what she'd seen of him.
"His parents..." she began. "Losing his parents turned him into this?"
Derek nodded, "It has something to do with that. He can't fully transform into a werewolf until he 'resolves that in [his] past which manifests [him]'." She recognized the quote from a passage of Archaic Latin Allison had recently asked her to translate.
"So if we can help him resolve the issue..." Lydia offered, drying the tears off of her face and wiping away a bit of the mascara.
"...then he should fully transform into a werewolf, and he will no longer be a killer lizard," Derek finished, shrugging slightly. Lydia nodded, already deep in thought.
"I think I know how to fix that problem," she stated, her mind set on saving Jackson. Even if he didn't love her anymore, he was still important to her, and she couldn't live with him being some murderous monster for the rest of his life. She realized this desire probably conflicted with Peter's plans for her being Derek's mate, but she didn't give a damn. He could either wait or kiss her ass because Jackson's plight was more important.
"I'd love to hear any suggestions," Derek intoned, leaning on the floor-length pole beside him. Lydia smiled conspiratorially but held up one finger to tell him to wait.
"Let's get one thing straight first. We work together to save Jackson, and then we're even."
"And Allison still wants me dead," he noted, squinting his eyes in a frown.
"True, but she thinks you killed her mother, so I don't know how much of a help I'm going to be in that department. Besides, she's probably pretty mad at me now thanks to what I said to her earlier."
"Well, I didn't kill her mother, if that's what you need to know," he explained patiently as he'd done before. "The truth is that her mother - crazy bitch that she was - was going to kill Scott. She had him drugged, and he was going to die, and I heard him and I ran in to save him. As we were escaping, I bit her and we ran off. That's it. She died because she killed herself, not because of anything I did."
He pouted, a look that was rather entertaining on a man of his musculature, and his shoulders slumped tiredly. Lydia stifled a giggle at the sight and raised her eyebrows. "Mrs. Argent was going to kill Scott?"
"Yep. She had the wolfsbane snifters going so strong I almost passed out when I came in the room. He was about five minutes from biting the dust."
Lydia's eyebrows raised once more, the corners of her mouth drawing down as she sniffed a 'hmm' sound. If Allison only knew the truth, if she'd listened to her advice and gotten all the facts, then they wouldn't be feuding right now.
"I'll see what I can do about that, but I can't make any promises. Do we have a deal though? We work together; we save Jackson?" she asked, fixing him with her determined gaze and extending a hand for him to shake. He glanced down at her hand dubiously and then back up at her with a matching look of determination.
"We have a deal."