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moirariordan) wrote2012-07-02 06:58 pm
moirariordan) wrote2012-07-02 06:58 pm
Entry tags:
orphan fic; needs good home
So I wouldn't normally do this, but I've been going through a lot of the shit I have on my hard drive now that my computer and I have been reunited and I found this thing that I started months ago, that has now been effectively Jossed. I'm not going to do anything with it because well, playing around with canon is more interesting, but if anyone likes the idea feel free to run with it.
I still hope Show makes Lydia into a bad ass. Because come the fuck on, if she's just going to be Ginny Weasley for the rest of forever I'm gonna be pissed.
Lydia turns eighteen and stops aging.
She notices it the way she has always noticed things about herself: how her hair slowly but surely lightens exactly two shades in the summer, inversely proportional to the two shades her skin darkens, how the little bits of acne that still lingered around her chin and forehead clears up bit by bit, how she's grown two inches in the past two years and her two front teeth have inched a fraction closer together. She tracks all of these changes the way she tracks her weight, her periods, her emotions: methodically, practically, very, very accurately.
Anger, she notes, dismay. Disbelief, frustration, and sorrow. Lots and lots of sorrow.
Derek is the only one who notices, if she's correct about the way he looks at her, which she believes that she is. He's never quite known what to make of her; for all the concern and protectiveness that he expends towards her, for all that he's done to enfold her into the group, to make sure that she's safe and sane and ready for what's to come, he still looks at her differently. He's still confused by her.
"You remind him of his sister," Stiles told her once, quietly, as they were washing dishes in the kitchen together, elbow to elbow. She and Stiles do a lot of things together nowadays, since the hospital, since everything. "He told me."
"Willingly?" Lydia asks. Stiles makes a face at her.
"I'm a very good confidant," he says, puffing out his chest.
Lydia smacks him so she doesn't have to agree.
"It's just hard for him, I think," Stiles says, more soberly. "Living in this town, sometimes. Laura was all he had, you know?"
Lydia really doesn't. (Yet.)
Grief makes her uncomfortable, this is the reason why she never let Jackson talk to her about his birth parents, or why she always stays at friends' places on the days when her mother gets maudlin about her older brother's death and wanders around the house with a glass of scotch in her hand, like a ghost. Stiles never talks to her about his mother, or his father either, because she thinks he's the same way - she thinks he knows what it's like to have your heart on display, and to resent the hell out of it. Everyone remembers Mrs. Stilinski's funeral. Just like everyone remembers the Hale fire.
(Is that why Derek and Laura moved away, Lydia wonders, thinks, probably. She thinks, how Derek must hate this place. She thinks, how lucky we are to have him.)
She doesn't like to dwell, is the thing. She doesn't want to remember things that suck, what is the point? Why should she waste time thinking about what could have been or what almost was, when she could be concentrating on what is and what's going to be?
And isn't that the perfect ironic twist, because this is what she is. Eighteen. She's eighteen and there's nothing more that she's ever going to be.
"Are we going to talk about it?" Derek asks her one afternoon, touching her shoulder lightly with one hand. He always does that, she's noticed, touches people unassumingly when he comes up behind them, as if to warn them that he's there. People in his pack, anyway. "Or, do you want to talk about it."
Lydia shakes her head. "But I suppose I should."
"Says who?" Derek asks, settling down beside her. They're on the back porch, that Derek made Jackson remodel last summer. He'd called it a training exercise in discipline, but Lydia suspects Derek was just fucking with him. She heartily approves. "I won't make you."
That, Lydia also heartily approves of. "Do you know why?" she asks. "That's the one thing I want to know. More than anything else."
Derek is silent; he just shakes his head in the negative. He smells like regret.
"That's perfect," Lydia spits. "Perfect."
"I'm sorry," he says.
"Shut up," she replies. He obeys, strangely. Or maybe not.
So they don't talk, they just watch Jackson and Scott climb trees in the backyard, bickering with each other in voices that carry through the valley on the wind. Allison and Stiles are together on a blanket, laughing and talking, eating strawberries from a plastic bowl. The sun is strong, there are no clouds. And Lydia feels like screaming.
"There are legends," Derek says quietly after a while, looking away from her, his eyes on the restless outlines of the treetops, "stories I've heard, of women who didn't grow old. Women who'd been blessed by the gods to stay young and beautiful forever. They were immune to the bite, immune to everything."
Lydia stares at her arms, the outlines of her scars that are almost completely faded.
"I never thought of it," Derek murmurs, "I didn't even think it was true. It was just a story, something you'd tell to children."
"How did the stories end?" Lydia asks.
Derek moves backwards to rest his weight on his arms, the inside of his shoulder brushing the back of hers.
"They didn't," he says. Figures, Lydia thinks.
--
Stiles stayed by her bedside the entire time she was unconscious, she knows, because the nurses had all told her in effusive tones about the nice young man who'd watered her flowers and kept the gawkers away. When she'd woken up the first thing she'd seen was his math textbook, with his notebook sticking out of the back cover. She'd reached out with a bandaged hand and corrected two of his problems before anyone noticed that she was awake. That was a good day.
He was the one who drove her to her physical therapy appointments and helped her brush her hair in the bathroom before first period because it hurt to hold her arms up for too long and she couldn't make her fingers tight enough to keep ahold of the brush. He was also the one to tell her what really happened to her, to sort out what was truth and what was nightmare in her fractured memories. He was the one who was the most honest with her.
When they kissed it was like dancing, it made her feel healthy again, and beautiful. She showed him her scars on their second date and he traced them with a ballpoint pen from his pocket, drawing stupid pictures on her skin and making her laugh. Who cares, he'd said, and kissed her forehead, you're still here, Lydia. You're still alive. Like that was the important part. Like that mattered more.
He holds her hand whenever he can and invites her over to eat dinner with him and his father, jokes with her and smiles at her constantly even when he's angry. He makes her explain calculus to him over and over again until he gets it and he actually listens, and chatters constantly and never gets sullen and sulky and he gives as good as he gets and understands that sometimes, she's mean because she just doesn't know how to be nice. When they fight it never lasts very long, and they make up by having loud sex in inappropriate places and she'll lie there next to him afterwards, sweaty and disheveled and giggling helplessly because God, she's never had this much fun in her life.
There's a part of her that resents him for giving her this much power, for forcing her to consider him and his feelings just because she's the one he chose to care about, the random pretty popular girl that he happened to fixate on in sixth grade and for whatever reason, never gave up on. He says there's a reason for everything, that it was more than just who she was but who she was, that there's a reason his best friend was bitten and that she was attacked, that Derek came back when he did and that he became their Alpha. They were meant to go down this path, to form this thing Derek calls pack, and Stiles calls, us. Lydia isn't so sure.
That soul mate stuff is full of shit, Lydia has always said, because Lydia knows that relationships are about sacrifice and hard work and not giving up, and fuck those people who think it's all hearts and flowers and running through meadows on the backs of white horses. Her father has more mistresses than Lydia has friends and her mother dove head first into the liquor cabinet ten years ago and hasn't surfaced since, and Derek's family was murdered and Stiles can't even talk about his mom he misses her so much and Allison is two breaths from being disowned because she refuses to hate the same people her family hates; obviously love doesn't last as long as it does in the movies. It's foolish to think that everything will work out fine just because it's meant to, because what, some invisible paternalistic old man in the sky wills it to be so? If they've found happiness in the midst of this murky painful mudslide of a life, it's because they were all determined to find it, because Allison and Scott refused to let go of each other, because Derek refused to renounce his obligation to them, because Lydia woke up from a coma and decided to go after something that was actually good for her, for once. Stiles has faith in the universe and fate and all that Harry Potter bullshit, whatever, bless his heart, but Lydia doesn't have time for fairy tales and sparkly lights, she's always had more important things to do.
Like teach Stiles calculus, like pick out carpet for Derek's new living room and paint his kitchen walls, like go shopping with Allison, like bicker with Jackson in English class, like bully Scott just because, like drink coffee with her friends on Sunday mornings and think about how she almost never got to have this, any of this at all.
Stiles and Lydia celebrate their three-month anniversary by TP'ing Jackson's house and having a marathon bowling tournament against five eighth graders. Stiles gives her a new calculator. Lydia gives him a pair of purple fuzzy dice for his rearview mirror. Jackson's parents give them both a good talking-to.
(Lydia is happy.)
I still hope Show makes Lydia into a bad ass. Because come the fuck on, if she's just going to be Ginny Weasley for the rest of forever I'm gonna be pissed.
Lydia turns eighteen and stops aging.
She notices it the way she has always noticed things about herself: how her hair slowly but surely lightens exactly two shades in the summer, inversely proportional to the two shades her skin darkens, how the little bits of acne that still lingered around her chin and forehead clears up bit by bit, how she's grown two inches in the past two years and her two front teeth have inched a fraction closer together. She tracks all of these changes the way she tracks her weight, her periods, her emotions: methodically, practically, very, very accurately.
Anger, she notes, dismay. Disbelief, frustration, and sorrow. Lots and lots of sorrow.
Derek is the only one who notices, if she's correct about the way he looks at her, which she believes that she is. He's never quite known what to make of her; for all the concern and protectiveness that he expends towards her, for all that he's done to enfold her into the group, to make sure that she's safe and sane and ready for what's to come, he still looks at her differently. He's still confused by her.
"You remind him of his sister," Stiles told her once, quietly, as they were washing dishes in the kitchen together, elbow to elbow. She and Stiles do a lot of things together nowadays, since the hospital, since everything. "He told me."
"Willingly?" Lydia asks. Stiles makes a face at her.
"I'm a very good confidant," he says, puffing out his chest.
Lydia smacks him so she doesn't have to agree.
"It's just hard for him, I think," Stiles says, more soberly. "Living in this town, sometimes. Laura was all he had, you know?"
Lydia really doesn't. (Yet.)
Grief makes her uncomfortable, this is the reason why she never let Jackson talk to her about his birth parents, or why she always stays at friends' places on the days when her mother gets maudlin about her older brother's death and wanders around the house with a glass of scotch in her hand, like a ghost. Stiles never talks to her about his mother, or his father either, because she thinks he's the same way - she thinks he knows what it's like to have your heart on display, and to resent the hell out of it. Everyone remembers Mrs. Stilinski's funeral. Just like everyone remembers the Hale fire.
(Is that why Derek and Laura moved away, Lydia wonders, thinks, probably. She thinks, how Derek must hate this place. She thinks, how lucky we are to have him.)
She doesn't like to dwell, is the thing. She doesn't want to remember things that suck, what is the point? Why should she waste time thinking about what could have been or what almost was, when she could be concentrating on what is and what's going to be?
And isn't that the perfect ironic twist, because this is what she is. Eighteen. She's eighteen and there's nothing more that she's ever going to be.
"Are we going to talk about it?" Derek asks her one afternoon, touching her shoulder lightly with one hand. He always does that, she's noticed, touches people unassumingly when he comes up behind them, as if to warn them that he's there. People in his pack, anyway. "Or, do you want to talk about it."
Lydia shakes her head. "But I suppose I should."
"Says who?" Derek asks, settling down beside her. They're on the back porch, that Derek made Jackson remodel last summer. He'd called it a training exercise in discipline, but Lydia suspects Derek was just fucking with him. She heartily approves. "I won't make you."
That, Lydia also heartily approves of. "Do you know why?" she asks. "That's the one thing I want to know. More than anything else."
Derek is silent; he just shakes his head in the negative. He smells like regret.
"That's perfect," Lydia spits. "Perfect."
"I'm sorry," he says.
"Shut up," she replies. He obeys, strangely. Or maybe not.
So they don't talk, they just watch Jackson and Scott climb trees in the backyard, bickering with each other in voices that carry through the valley on the wind. Allison and Stiles are together on a blanket, laughing and talking, eating strawberries from a plastic bowl. The sun is strong, there are no clouds. And Lydia feels like screaming.
"There are legends," Derek says quietly after a while, looking away from her, his eyes on the restless outlines of the treetops, "stories I've heard, of women who didn't grow old. Women who'd been blessed by the gods to stay young and beautiful forever. They were immune to the bite, immune to everything."
Lydia stares at her arms, the outlines of her scars that are almost completely faded.
"I never thought of it," Derek murmurs, "I didn't even think it was true. It was just a story, something you'd tell to children."
"How did the stories end?" Lydia asks.
Derek moves backwards to rest his weight on his arms, the inside of his shoulder brushing the back of hers.
"They didn't," he says. Figures, Lydia thinks.
--
Stiles stayed by her bedside the entire time she was unconscious, she knows, because the nurses had all told her in effusive tones about the nice young man who'd watered her flowers and kept the gawkers away. When she'd woken up the first thing she'd seen was his math textbook, with his notebook sticking out of the back cover. She'd reached out with a bandaged hand and corrected two of his problems before anyone noticed that she was awake. That was a good day.
He was the one who drove her to her physical therapy appointments and helped her brush her hair in the bathroom before first period because it hurt to hold her arms up for too long and she couldn't make her fingers tight enough to keep ahold of the brush. He was also the one to tell her what really happened to her, to sort out what was truth and what was nightmare in her fractured memories. He was the one who was the most honest with her.
When they kissed it was like dancing, it made her feel healthy again, and beautiful. She showed him her scars on their second date and he traced them with a ballpoint pen from his pocket, drawing stupid pictures on her skin and making her laugh. Who cares, he'd said, and kissed her forehead, you're still here, Lydia. You're still alive. Like that was the important part. Like that mattered more.
He holds her hand whenever he can and invites her over to eat dinner with him and his father, jokes with her and smiles at her constantly even when he's angry. He makes her explain calculus to him over and over again until he gets it and he actually listens, and chatters constantly and never gets sullen and sulky and he gives as good as he gets and understands that sometimes, she's mean because she just doesn't know how to be nice. When they fight it never lasts very long, and they make up by having loud sex in inappropriate places and she'll lie there next to him afterwards, sweaty and disheveled and giggling helplessly because God, she's never had this much fun in her life.
There's a part of her that resents him for giving her this much power, for forcing her to consider him and his feelings just because she's the one he chose to care about, the random pretty popular girl that he happened to fixate on in sixth grade and for whatever reason, never gave up on. He says there's a reason for everything, that it was more than just who she was but who she was, that there's a reason his best friend was bitten and that she was attacked, that Derek came back when he did and that he became their Alpha. They were meant to go down this path, to form this thing Derek calls pack, and Stiles calls, us. Lydia isn't so sure.
That soul mate stuff is full of shit, Lydia has always said, because Lydia knows that relationships are about sacrifice and hard work and not giving up, and fuck those people who think it's all hearts and flowers and running through meadows on the backs of white horses. Her father has more mistresses than Lydia has friends and her mother dove head first into the liquor cabinet ten years ago and hasn't surfaced since, and Derek's family was murdered and Stiles can't even talk about his mom he misses her so much and Allison is two breaths from being disowned because she refuses to hate the same people her family hates; obviously love doesn't last as long as it does in the movies. It's foolish to think that everything will work out fine just because it's meant to, because what, some invisible paternalistic old man in the sky wills it to be so? If they've found happiness in the midst of this murky painful mudslide of a life, it's because they were all determined to find it, because Allison and Scott refused to let go of each other, because Derek refused to renounce his obligation to them, because Lydia woke up from a coma and decided to go after something that was actually good for her, for once. Stiles has faith in the universe and fate and all that Harry Potter bullshit, whatever, bless his heart, but Lydia doesn't have time for fairy tales and sparkly lights, she's always had more important things to do.
Like teach Stiles calculus, like pick out carpet for Derek's new living room and paint his kitchen walls, like go shopping with Allison, like bicker with Jackson in English class, like bully Scott just because, like drink coffee with her friends on Sunday mornings and think about how she almost never got to have this, any of this at all.
Stiles and Lydia celebrate their three-month anniversary by TP'ing Jackson's house and having a marathon bowling tournament against five eighth graders. Stiles gives her a new calculator. Lydia gives him a pair of purple fuzzy dice for his rearview mirror. Jackson's parents give them both a good talking-to.
(Lydia is happy.)