She dies in the end.

“You’re right.” The words are sour on his tongue, sound stilted from disuse, but they’re genuine. “I wasn’t. I think we can all agree that me leaving worked out best for everyone. No one here to mes everything up. I couldn’t even take the bite right.” 

Exhaustion and exasperation war for a spot in her voice. It wasn’t like this was easy for any of them. Peter’s bite made her what she was today, and she will always hate him for it. Scott didn’t come to be the True Alpha with sunshine and rainbows.

They’ve all struggled, they’ve all lost. 

“Our lives suck, Jackson. It’s not a suck competition. We’ve all been through hell and it just keeps happening. It’s never going to stop happening. So either we...we suck it up and keep fighting, or we lay down and die. 

So why don’t you suck it up already and talk to Scott. You need a pack. You need protection.”

College is refreshing, Scott decides two weeks in. It’s nothing like Beacon Hills, with it’s anonymity and self-chosen schedules. Everyone minds their own business in this giant behemoth of a city and, not for the first time, he realizes what a good idea this was.

New York is always moving, the concrete jungle that it is, and while Scott had thought he’d feel the distinct lack of forest, he finds the drastic change lifted him out of the pit that was slowly swallowing him whole. 

He’d been drowning in Beacon Hills, they all had. He misses his mom, he misses the packmates that stayed behind, but he’d known, the second it’d been suggested, that this was a good idea. 

It never would have worked without the two that had come with him, though. 

Scott pockets his phone and slides on a pair of headphones, the walk to Central Park routine by now. He’s still on edge, he always is; Deaton had told him he’d never truly wear out of it, now. Said his behavior can psychologically be linked to that of a soldier come back from war. He knows Stiles and Lydia feel the same. 

Not all of it is unfounded. There are rival packs here, alphas sniffing at their heels, wondering what this new pack is, what they’re doing here. They’ll deal with it as it comes, like they always do. Difference is, there’s no Nemeton itching at the base of their skull, no legacy choking the life out of them. 

The park is alive with bikers and joggers, loungers and workers, and Scott finds the thick-trunked tree they’ve managed to sit under the numerous times they’d been since they moved here. 

It’s ridiculous how often that happens lately. He gets so much sleep, he might as well be taking brief comas, he’s been sleeping like a log. Okay, the oversleeping might be because he’s still a night owl, despite his best attempts at getting a healthy sleeping schedule. But the point is that it’s not because of insomnia anymore.

He’s not sure what it says about their little hell hole of a hometown that New York feels like the safest place in the world by comparison. 

The point is, he’s late for normal sleep related reasons. And he’s running for normal non-life-threatening reasons.

“Hey!” He all but topples over on the grass next to Scott. Yeah, he’s still not the most athletic person, okay? Excuse him while he wheezes like an old man and tries to catch his breath. 

“Did you wait long?”

Which is why Lydia doesn’t stroll up to their spot (theirs, no one else’s, they’re good at carving out niches in a pinch) until about fifteen minutes later. But she does so with a bag of math textbooks slung over her shoulder and a drink carrier with three coffees in hand. 

They’d starve without her, and Stiles would probably be pantless at all times. 

“Yours. With enough sugar to kill a hippo.” She hands the cup to Stiles, and steals a little kiss from the smile blooming on his lips in the process. “And yours.” This one to Scott, and a kiss for him too. He’s already smiling. 

(She likes seeing them both smile.)

Hers is made with soy milk and maybe half of the cup is whipped cream, but she was the one who paid, so no one got to judge her caffeine/sugar habits. 

Lydia sits facing them, pulling her bag off and smoothing her hair down against her shoulders before she’s down to business, gaze on Scott. 

He blinks, eyes staying shut for a beat longer than they should, and he sees her standing there, that little smile that would play on her lips, eyes shining with thoughts of mischief. Missing her is a wound, but it’s not raw, and he can think back on her with melancholy and remembered happiness, not the debilitating pain it used to. 

And seeing Scott still love her doesn’t hurt like a raw, open wound. It hurts like poking an old bruise, and that’s okay. 

They’re okay. 

“As if she wouldn’t be proud of you too?”

Oh, she sees right through you, Scott McCall. You’re not even rice paper, you’re cling wrap. 

Lydia moves to stand in front of him, squaring up to what little height she has. 

“Scott, you have saved us more times than I can count. You always come through in the end.”

A little tug on their laced fingers. 

Well, he thinks Malia is the exception. Whether or not she agrees sometimes is another matter. 

But this? The way Lydia’s touch immediately eases the tension in his muscles, her calming scent rolling through his nose and down to his marrow, it’s something he never would have expected. 

The thought that he doesn’t deserve this from her is not a new one. 

He watches her closely as she stops moving. He’s not particularly alarmed when she does, because she doesn’t have that look about her, the one that has Scott swallowing his heart. Patiently, he waits for her to return to herself, intimately familiar with that faraway feeling and how hard it is to rein it in sometimes. 

Her nails are burgundy, deep and dark and rich, with a hint of a sparkle to them, and they’re laced between Scott’s fingers. 

“Allison.”

Lydia tries to say her name as much as possible. At least once a week. Even if she’s whispering it in the darkness of her bedroom, alone. It keeps her memory alive. 

(And bringing up Allison is a fast track to stuffing down all of this pressure building in her chest, because she’ll see the love still etched into the edges of Scott’s face and it will be a reminder.)

Never going to happen. Ever. 

It’s not fine, not really. And he knows she’s responding to what he’d said, he gets it, but the words ring wrong between them. Not because they themselves aren’t fine with each other - Scott is grateful every day that she’s here, now, sharing airspace with him. Because she almost wasn’t. 

And that’s not fine. 

Scott has the feeling she would have spent the rest of her high school career being top of the school, stressed only about her GPA and not if she was going to survive to see graduation, if not for him. 

Regardless, he takes a deep breath, taking the lighter moment for what it is, and smiles. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Everything feels settled.” 

That’s a word for it. To Lydia, it feels more like they’re stuck on the inhale of a breath, and that any moment now they’ll exhale and the world will shatter into a million chaotic, awful pieces. 

But settled...

She feels settled when her hand moves in the space between them, curling into the heat of his palm. 

They fit, more than she would have ever thought possible. 

She thinks about Allison, and with her eyes closed and silence around her, she can almost picture her best friend standing in the woods with them. 

Allison would find it hilarious, watching Lydia catch a case of the feelings with her old boyfriend. She’d laugh, and then Lydia would have to make her promise not to tell Isaac.

God, she missed her. 

She doesn’t realize they’ve stopped (because of her) for a long moment. 

Scott isn’t quite sure why he thought a walk would do them both good. Open air often does, especially now that the thick beat of anxiety doesn’t throb in his veins, anxiety for the girl at his side, looking and smelling as lovely as ever. 

They’d been too close. For weeks, they’d been too close to losing her. And right as they’d gotten her back, she was almost gone again. This world wasn’t fair to them, but it was by far worst for her, this strong girl who took the voices in stride and used it to her advantage. She was always a weapon, and now she has another one at her disposal. 

Her tone is gently exasperated, but her expression is all fondness. Lydia finds herself craving the quiet more and more these days. Less voices pressing in on her, that constant throb at the base of her skull easing when she’s out among the green, removed from the people. 

Being with Scott helps, too. He’s a constant, warm and solid and real even when she doubts the world around her. 

“This is nice.”

She should be in New York. Any New York. Not here. 

The hand jars Gwen back to herself, and she swallows the sick feeling in her throat and gives a jerky nod. Trying to keep her shuffling at a minimum, Gwen finds her sad pile of notes and hands them over. It’s easy to ignore Lydia’s short tone; Gwen did interrupt her studying, after all. She knows it’s not exactly the best way to go about meeting people. 

“New York. Land of Opportunity, great pizza, and a superhero every block nowadays.”

She says it with a kind of wistfulness that kicks Lydia’s aloofness right in the left butt cheek. The notes (if they can even be called that) are left in front of her as she finally turns her attention fully to Gwen. 

“Do you miss it?”

A little bit softer, a little bit kinder. C’mon, Lydia. Not everyone in the world was out to get you. 

If high school in Beacon Hills has taught her anything, it’s to be instantly suspicious of strangers. (And hope they chalk it up to teenage hormones.)

“No. Animal Control took care of it.”

The movement has her watching the book, curiosity getting the better of her. She can’t read the cover at a glance, though, and heck, maybe this really was the right girl to ask for help on French. Was that Latin?

“Gwen Stacy, token new girl. Nice to meet you, Lydia.” 

Weird thing is, she means it. Meeting new people is always awkward, and this is no exception, because Gwen has spent her life letting people stumble into her life and consistently being surprised when they stay, but she’s out of sorts here. She has no idea where her father is, if she even has a father in this universe. The temptation to go looking for him, for herself, might be what’s keeping her here in this little town in the middle of Cali. That, and the constant weird vibe washing over her like waves on a shoreline. 

And for most of it, Lydia had dreamed about getting out of here. There had been Stanford pamphlets in her bedroom since she graduated from fifth grade, and a multistep plan to get the hell out of Beacon Hills and on to a better life. 

The Fields Medal. That’s what she told Stiles, back when life was about boys and looking good. It had felt like surviving, back then. 

Boy, she didn’t know a damn thing about surviving before Peter Hale.

Manicured fingers walk across table and stop in front of Gwen, making the ‘gimme’ gesture. 

“Let me look at your notes while you tell me about where you came from.”

There’s no heat to it, or to the kick under the table where her bare foot connects with his shin.