#okttavia

There was no doubt that she was his soulmate. Not in his head; not in hers. Not in anyone else’s. There was no bond like the one they shared; they just worked. They connected. They understood each other perfectly. Their relationship wasn’t even romantic –not that he wouldn’t have liked it that way, but it went deeper than that. It went deeper than anything he knew.

They hadn’t always been like this. It all started with unrequited love, first day of freshman year. No matter how much he tried to get her attention, she wouldn’t even give him the time of the day. Still, he cared. He noticed. He noticed how she used to play dumb, to hide her intelligence, her brilliance. How her brows furrowed when she was reading, her mouth tightened. How her laugh varied depending on who she was with, going from cute giggles when she was with someone she liked, to loud guffaws that turned silent when she felt comfortable with someone.

But it wasn’t until they were put together for an assignment for Trig that they started getting along. The genius and the geek. Talk about pairing the smart ones together. From then, it all went uphill. She would help him study for Chemistry, and he’d help her with History (though she denied needing help); she would let him copy her Biology answers, because no matter how much he tried he could understand nothing; she’d sit with him when Scott didn’t share their lunch hour, and after a while, even then.

His love for her changed too, developed. But it never faltered. She was his friend. She was his anchor. She was his strength. Lydia Martin was his soulmate, and he needed to save her.

—

“Stiles, I swear, if you ruin this titration once more, I’m gonna make you drink it,” she claimed, annoyance on her voice but the hint of a smile on her eyes. All he could do was smile and shrug his shoulders, looking apologetically back at her.

“Sorry?”

Lydia groaned, focusing again in the task at hand and shutting down everything around her; she needed to get it right at least once before the class finished. After a couple of minutes she finally relaxed back on her stool, satisfaction filling her eyes and a smile tugging at her lips, only to be disturbed by the ringing of the bell.

“I swear, sometimes I wonder why I still work with you in every single class if I’m always gonna end up doing all the work,” she muttered as she grabbed her bag and headed towards the door. Stiles jogged after her.

“Well, it must be because of my amazing humor and quick wit,” he replied. “That, and my incredible good looks, of course”

She chuckled and punched him in the arm, but that did not discourage him of putting his arm around her shoulders and slightly ruffling her hair. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, Lydia,” he muttered into her hair as they headed towards the cafeteria.

—

Lydia stayed in the library longer than she’d intended. When she finally finished the research she needed to do, she lifted her eyes to find the sun was already setting. Quickly grabbing all her stuff, she headed towards the parking lot and her car, one of the few left at this hour.

She didn’t get to climb on it though, before she felt a sudden pain sear through her abdomen, above her right hip. A knife jabbed from her wound, the clothes around it quickly turning red. She looked up to find a familiar face in front of her, the blond hair dirty and the brown eyes frantic.

“Sorry,” Kate Argent said ironically. All the red-haired could think about before passing out was how much she hated feeling this helpless.

—

“I’m telling you, Kate Argent is back and she’s taken Lydia,” Stiles insisted for the umpteenth time.

“It just makes no sense,” Scott retorted.

“Steven said he saw Lydia being stabbed and kidnapped by a crazy blonde bitch when he was leaving school. Who else matches the description?” Desperation filled his voice. He couldn’t shake the feeling in his chest that she needed help, fast.

“And why didn’t Steven go to the police, then?”

“HE DID!” Stiles was starting to lose his patience. “How do you think I know what he saw?”

It was a rhetoric question, but Scott replied anyway, the answer obvious. “Because of the police radio in your car.” He got back an exasperated nod from his best friend.

“Now can we please go save Lydia?”

“What’s the plan?”

“I’m gonna need Papa Argent’s number”

—

“Oh, I wouldn’t even dream about it,” Kate Argent said before Lydia could begin to wail.

She didn’t need to scream for long, she just needed to be heard. Defiance filled her eyes as she prepared to do what she did best: scream, and hope someone would hear her.

Unsurprisingly, a fist met her lip, interrupting her screech after a few seconds. “I warned you.”

“What do you want from me?” Lydia asked with blood on her mouth, the fear she felt well hidden from her voice.

“Sweetie, it’s not you I want. It’s Scott I’m after. I just needed to prove a point with you.”

—

Stiles waited outside a seemingly empty warehouse in the woods. All the lights were off, but the focused look on Scott’s face told him there were people inside.

They’d gotten to the woods based on a hunch in Stiles’ gut, a feeling in his chest that pulled him in that direction. After that, they’d wandered around aimlessly for a while before following Lydia’s scream and arriving to their destination.

Scott had let Chris Argent know that they’d found his sister, and he, Stiles and Liam were now waiting her to take the bait and leave to talk to his brother. “The whole rescue mission depends completely on how naïve she is,” Liam whispered, clearly not pleased with the plan.

His alpha glared at him. “It’s not ingenuity. It’s family.”

“All I’m saying is why would she leave to have tea with his brother when she is holding someone hostage?”

“Who cares, but it worked,” Stiles said. “There she goes.” From their hideout they could barely recognize the figure leaving the house, but it was clearly female and it was noticeably blonde.

A couple of minutes after she left, and after Scott made sure her footsteps could no longer be heard, he and Liam ran toward the front door, not necessarily being quiet in their way, while Stiles snuck in through the back door. Making sure the people Kate had left behind had heard the commotion made by his friends and headed towards it, he made his way through an endless maze of hallways.

Room after room, he saw no trace of her, until finally, he found the right door. For a moment, he thought this room was empty too, nothing but old boxes and bad smell, but then he saw a bundle of red hair behind a pile of cardboard boxes and rushed toward her.

Blood dripped from a gash on her temple and her lower lip was swollen; an open wound on her lower abdomen tainted everything around her read; her breaths were faint but constant; her eyes narrowed, not completely distinguishing the figure in front of her. From afar, she heard someone calling her name, but no matter how hard she tried she could not reply.

“Lydia.” Again, the distant voice. It sounded so familiar, so comforting. “Lydia, please, look at me.” The whispers sounded urgent, demanding. Arms wrapped around her and forced her into a sitting position, and finally her eyes focused on the person in front of her.

Stiles.

Her hero. Her savior.

But still, no matter how hard she tried, she could not move a single muscle in her body. Accepting this fact, there was only one recurring thought in her head, which she muttered out loud without meaning to. “I guess dying with you isn’t the worst way to go.”

“Lydia, you’re not dying, okay? I’m getting you out of here. Just hold on for one more second. Everything will be just fine. Please, I can’t lose y…” But she drifted off, consciousness slipping from her fingers, not hearing the end to that sentence.

—

She woke up to the steady beat of her heart on the monitor to her right. To her left, Stiles was sleeping next to her on the hospital bed, his arm wrapped around her. As soon as she woke up though, he stirred awake, concern on his eyes. A faint smile painted across Lydia’s face, not ever as happy to see his face as she was now. The pounding on her head felt distant when she lost herself on his eyes, the lack of light in the room making his shine even further.

“Uhm… how are you feeling?” He said, his eyes breaking the contact with hers, focusing for a second on her lips before scanning the room.

“Like I almost died, so… not good” After a seconds pause, she added, “Thank you for saving my life, Stiles. Whatever you did, I can assure you it was really stupid, but still, thank you”

“I couldn’t leave you to die. Who would help me pass Biology if I did?”

A faint laugh escaped her lips. “I mean it though, you shouldn’t have risked your life like that-“

“Lydia, I’d die for you.” He placed his hand on her cheek, locking eyes with her. Without even meaning to, she licked her lips, a tingling sensation spreading all over her body, nothing to do with the meds she was on. She’d been held like this a million times, but she’d never felt electricity coursing through her like she did now.

Not sure who moved in first, suddenly their lips were against each other. It was a gentle kiss, one that said a thousand things that didn’t need to be spoken. His lips were soft against hers, his hand caressing her cheek, her hands clamping his shirt.

Stiles broke it off not long after it started, his eyes unfocused but pleased, a smile hinting at the edge of his lips. He leaned back on the pillow, his arm still under and around her. “Of course, I’d hunt you in the afterlife. But it’s the thought that counts, really.”

Her laugh quickly turned into a whimper, the stitches on her stomach tightening at the movement. “How did you even do it? Rescue me, I mean.” Before he could answer, she realized another detail.  “And how the hell are you here in my hospital bed after visiting hours?”

“Oh, the perks of your best friend’s mom being a nurse,” he replied jokingly, but after a glare from Lydia added, “Melissa agreed to let me stay because she knew I would’ve snuck in if she didn’t. I couldn’t bear the thought of going home. I needed to make sure you were okay.” His eyes suddenly turned dark, his brows furrowed.

Instinctively, Lydia placed a peck on his lips, before placing her head on his chest, faintly hearing his heartbeat fasten for a second before going back to normal. Drowsiness started to fill her, but still she insisted. “I really do want to know how you got me out of there, Stiles” She dragged the words out of her mouth, the sentence slurred by the sleepiness consuming her.

“That’s a story for another time.” Gingerly, he kissed the top of her head, the smell of her vanilla shampoo and old blood surrounding him. “Now, you need to rest.”

His hand caressed her bare arm for a while. “I couldn’t bear losing you, Lydia” he said when he thought she’d fallen asleep. But she hadn’t.