Chapter Text
1.
Certain words are more than words to Lydia. Of course, she understands that English is not a symbolic language, in that words in her mother tongue are composed of letters and not ideas, unlike, say, Japanese. She knows this, but there are some words that are more.
Words like symmetry. From the Greek symmetria, meaning “measure together.” This word is not letters but a vision of his face, hidden in shadows but familiar because she knows it so well. She began seeing him after waking up in the hospital. Well, she began seeing the two of them. The one who bit her – she saw him first, and still sees him. She knew from the beginning (charred flesh rising from the inky water in the tub) that he was wrongness and badness because the way that she saw him (under the ice, wandering the school hallways) was wrong and bad. But the other was good and right. Him she saw under her sheets, standing behind her bedroom door. A secret. Like Scott to Allison. But more because he was her secret.
Secrets mattered to him. It’s like she could remember that about him, but how was that possible, since he wasn’t real?
Before, Lydia was never interested in secrets or hidden things. What was the point? Things had value or they didn’t. Value of a thing is primarily derived from the extent to which others covet it, and if others don’t know that the thing exists…well, no point. Simple, logical. She indulged Allison’s secret because she knew how much it meant to her best (only) friend to keep Scott.
Allison loves Scott. Allison is fierce and brave and passionate.
Not Lydia. She is cold, she is careful and precise. She respects order because it is ever under siege by chaos, and she craves stability and definition because she knows that even though these things are not glamorous to foodies or hipsters, they are the antidote to war and confusion. This is not to say that she has no feelings, because she does. And she understands people, the things that drive them. She knows Stiles is in love with her, and she knows that Jackson is now (and has always been) in love with himself. What does she love?
Mom. Dad. Allison. (Jackson). Calculus.
Him.
No, he’s not real.
Unless he is.
Actually, she was convinced that he was some kind of manifestation of her suppressed memories of those two days she was naked and running around the woods and somehow did not die of thirst or exposure (and in fact was not even the worse for wear) until tonight, the night that Stiles caught her crying in her car. He had seemed like he was going to listen to her tell him about the broken mirror and the blood and the men with glowing eyes – the one who bit her (really) and the one who kissed her (but not really) – but then he hadn’t come back. He had left her alone.
Because sometimes the people closest to you can be the ones holding you back the most.
And now she is home, lying in bed with this feeling that the night is not for resting. She had given up on the idea of sleep when she plunges deep into a dream.
She's had this dream, or one like it, before. In it, she lives in a house in the woods. Her family’s house. The sun streams in through the windows and makes her feel young and powerful. Pictures of long dead relatives hang on the walls. Sometimes she just sits on a faded red velvet couch and listens as Amelia (Mom) tells her stories. Amelia tells the best stories. This time is different. This time, the bad and wrong man is sitting at the kitchen table, reading a book (on the cover: Le Signe du Loup-Garou) and eating cereal. She finds this funny because how could she ever have been scared of him?
“Peter,” she says, and he looks at her. “Eat, then read.”
She is sort of kidding but sort of not, and he gives her a look (resentful) before putting down the book and giving the cereal his full attention.
“You’re annoyed with me now,” she tells him, “but you’ll thank me later when you don’t have milk spilled on the pages of a three hundred-year-old hand-illuminated volume on our ancestors.”
“Yes, Laura,” he sing-songs, not looking at her. “Whatever you say.”
“He’s going to kill you.”
That voice. His voice.
Lydia turns around and looks and sees him plainly for the first time, no shadows or moonglow obscuring him but instead the bright day on his face. He stands in the doorway, dark hair wet from the shower. He is beautiful. And so, so sad.
“Won’t you save me?” She asks. He doesn’t answer, and she rises from her chair and goes to him, touches his cheek and watches, fascinated, as his eyes close for a heartbeat, then open. They glow blue, then turn angry red.
“You’re the Alpha now.” She leans forward and nuzzles his neck. She is not afraid of him either. “You can change things.”
He cups her face in his hands and draws her back to look in his glowing ember eyes. “Say my name.”
“Derek.” Derek. He has a name. And she knows it, has always known it. But here, in this house, is he going to call her Laura, like Peter did? Does he think she’s someone else too? She slips a hand down to the small of his back. He is hot to the touch. “Say my name.”
It feels like his skin is burning her hand. He leans down and kisses her, and yes he’s done that before in her visions of him but this is more, this is devouring. Something in her blood, something in her bones is singing, screaming, shouting. She wants to press closer, be nearer. Her hands curl into the soft cotton of his shirt and she thinks about trying to tear it off of him so she can feel all of him against all of her. She makes a noise like a growl and he makes the noise back. Her edges are blurring; it feels like something is about to happen. She is on the verge of being unmade.
He pulls away and presses his mouth against the thin skin over her collarbone, where she is vulnerable.
“Lydia,” he breathes. He is trembling. She knows then that he will do anything that she tells him, and she understands that she must not betray him with that power. Betrayal is not the way of their family. No, their way is revenge.
She wakes up, alone in her room. Her bed is cold. She whispers his name, “Derek.”
Outside, in the distance, she hears the long lonely howl of a wolf.