[fic] the lies we tell ourselves
fic: the lies we tell ourselves
fandom: teen wolf
pairing: lydia/allison, the mccall pack, ofc
word count: ~5,500
recipient: fluffyfrolicker who wanted allydia I like the way you write letters; you don't ramble on like you do when you talk for the october meme
setting: post S3B-AU (disregards S4-canon as I haven't seen it nor want to); Lydia writes a postcard to Allison summering in France every Friday of every week and lies in every one
a/n: I own nothing. No beta. All mistakes are my own (sorry!)
[It's a testosterone fest around here these days. Don't get fat eating all that French cheese.]The weather continues to be hell. Isaac and Scott think that it’s supernatural and I’m really tired of explaining global warming. It’s a testosterone fest around here these days. Did I tell you Stiles went out and rescued a puppy? Don’t get fat eating all that French cheese.
The postcard Lydia picks out at the drugstore has a picture of a beach sunset at it and California! scrawled across the bottom. It’s not like anything they have in Beacon Hills, but that will make Allison smile, so that’s why she slips it into the blue mailbox on Stratton St. with an international stamp taking up half of the space left for the address.
It’s maybe the third or fifth postcard she’s sent that summer.
She never puts a greeting or goodbye on them.
The first one she bought (with a skyline of Sacramento emblazoned on it) she wrote XOXO, Lydia at the bottom.
It ended up at the bottom of the bin at the drugstore in five uneven pieces.
She tried again and got it right the second time. No hi how are you and no farewells.
And definitely no see you soon! at the bottom of her ramblings.
She tries once to write a proper letter. Goes to the best place and buys the nicest stationary, sits at her desk with her multi-colored pens in a neat row. She starts and stops half a dozen times, becomes more efficient at throwing the balled-up scraps of paper into the wastebasket on the other side of the room.
Stiles calls with a Malia emergency and she leaves the stack of blank paper on her desk with a sigh of relief.
Postcards are much easier. There’s only so much space to fill. Only so much white staring up at her, expecting words that she can’t muster up, can’t find within herself to drag up from the recesses of her heart the things that she really ought to say.
I miss you.
I hate you.
How dare you fucking leave?
How am I supposed to live without you?
Come back to me.
But she doesn’t.
She tries to fill them up with words about the others and what they are doing. Has an anecdote about Malia adjusting to being a human in each one. Makes disparaging remarks about Isaac’s lack of competence with hair products and Kira’s newfound obsession with Lydia’s closet. She writes about them in stifled, halting sentences. She writes about a world where they are all together all the time and she is tired of the sight of them. She writes about Scott and Stiles showing up at 3am with fresh donuts and a pirated dvd. She writes about dragging Danny out shopping and how she stopped from him from buying a truly hideous leather jacket.
She fills up the white space with loose, loping script in pink or purple or green or orange ink (never black or blue… she tried that once and it looked too final, too formal, she needs it to be her voice and so it matches the shirt she’s wearing or the necklace at her throat, it carries her across the vastness of space) and it’s happy and content and never too manic.
She never talks too directly about herself. Doesn’t give hints about the spaces in between. Doesn’t mention the nights spent sitting on the floor, eyes wide open staring at the moon, tears flowing down her face. Doesn’t dare give any mention of the number of times Stiles (and Malia sometimes) have stood over her bed looking down at her and begged her to get out of bed, pleading and nearly crying because she hasn’t moved in days.
She talks about 3am donut runs, but doesn’t tell that they eat them on the floor with her in the kitchen, where her mother found her six hours earlier and she hasn’t had the energy to scrape herself off the linoleum and refused food, so she just stayed - staring at nothing. Doesn’t mention that they sit on either side of her and joke and cajole her into eating a donut and set Stile’s laptop on the floor with a chick-flick (something light and happy from beginning to end) and hold her hand. Doesn’t write about her mother finding them hours later, the boys asleep on either side of her and an empty box near them and Lydia still in the same position, her hands in their hands, face dry of the tears she sometimes can’t make fall, her eyes still staring straight ahead, not seeing anything.
She talks about shopping with Danny and going out with Kira and Malia, but doesn’t mention having a panic attack in a shoe store and having Danny carry her outside, holding her on his lap on a bench in the sudden rainstorm until she stops screaming, him calmly telling the security guards not to call the police. Doesn’t mention Kira and Malia holding back and watching her silently as she buys bags of merchandise she throws into a corner and never looks at again, trying not to be afraid of her manic laughter and hysterical eyes.
She writes a postcard once a week and drops it in the mailbox with an international stamp and no return address and it is full of half-lies and almost-truths.
It’s full of her hope that the lies were real.
(It’s mockingly empty.)
Allison reaches up her soft hand and brushes the hair away from Lydia’s face. You talk too much, she says with a smile.
It’s not my fault you missed a whole week of calculus.
Allison’s brow furrows, I was only out three days.
Too long, you missed an entire unit. And don’t even get me started on History!
Allison tugs her down on the bed, pinning her to the bed with the limbs and muscles of an athlete used to getting her way, Don’t start. I just want to rest for a while.
Allison's hair smells like the shampoo she insisted she switch to last month and the thought brings a soft smile to her lips, No rest for the wicked.
Somewhere one of their phone starts to buzz.
Ignore it, Allison whispers, nose cold on her throat, breath hot and warm.
The tell-tale chime of Allison’s phone disturbs the silence and the buzzing begins in earnest, a chorus from each of their purses.
No, Allison’s grip on her waist grows stronger, the leg across her thighs pressing their bodies further into the mattress as if with her simple strength she could make them disappear.
Somewhere in the recesses of Allison’s condo, a phone starts to ring, her father’s voice floats to them with a desperate warning lingering in his baritone.
Allison groans, I just wanted five minutes.
Technically we had an hour.
Yeah, Allison smiles and she can feel the lips curving against her skin raising goosebumps up and down her arms, but you talked about calculus the whole time.
Plenty of people find math stimulating.
Allison presses a hard kiss to her collarbone, more teeth and tongue than lips and there will be a soft mark there for the rest of the day, You’re sexy when you talk about math. I don’t think I learned anything.
I’ll have to just teach you again.
Allison is halfway across the room and she is left on the bed breathless, Please do.
She stops counting the postcards she sends out. She knows that she sends them on Fridays because she can’t stop her internal clock. Things work in sevens. She won’t turn the page on her calendar. She rips it off the wall and throws it under her bed. She puts away her daily planner in a desk drawer under the stationary set she never built up the courage to use. She ignores the pack and the full moon.
There are only seven days.
And then the next seven days.
Time for her is on a loop and if it starts moving in a straight line, her screams may take on a supernatural element.
Derek Hale lingers in her doorway from time to time, talking over her head and never looking her in the eye, making awful proclamations about her powers and needing to understand them and her responsibility to the pack.
She slams the door in his face.
(The third time he comes, she pulls at his neck and presses her tongue between his lips. She’s completely unsurprised when his hands come down to her hips and he pulls her closer to him, his lips and tongue matching hers just like she knew in that split second before she kissed him that they could. She drags her fingers through his hair and wishes she was strong enough to hurt him. She’s the first to pull away and neither one of them is breathless and maybe neither one of them is really embarrassed.
She slams the door in his face for good measure and the next time he comes, they act just as they always have - half annoyed and half exasperated and she thinks that maybe if she pulled him through the door and they fucked on her mother’s couch that maybe their conversations may start flowing a bit easier, but the thought makes her feel trapped and frantic and so she just slams the door in his face.
She’s becoming a creature of habit.)
Allison’s smile is a beacon of light that she has to steal herself from running towards, scolds her feet into clacking down the hallway at an even pace.
That’s a new dress!
Do you like it, she twirls around her heart still and heavy in her chest.
Allison grabs her arms and shakes her head, curls bouncing, Of course I love it! It looks great on you.
I thought I could use a change.
Allison’s nose wrinkles, How many times will you reinvent yourself before Christmas?
At least three more times. Life is too short to get stuck in a rut.
Allison swings her hair over one shoulder and looks down at her books distractedly, Maybe in your next incarnation we can start a band.
Allison and the Rockettes?
Allison slams her locker door shut and smirks, I was thinking ‘Lydia and the Archers’
Kira can be the drummer.
Allison laughs and throws an arm around her shoulders, She’d love that.
Her mother will hate it.
Her father will be our biggest fan.
They walk down the hall and she feels like Allison’s arm around her shoulders is the only thing keeping her from floating.
Twelve weeks after Allison leaves (she’s an expert at lying to herself) (the weeks are ingrained in her bones), she comes home and passes a mail carrier coming down her front walk, they avoid her eyes and she knows that it’s all over.
Her mother is sitting in the living room with a glass of wine in one hand and a stack of postcards on the coffee table in front of her.
On one side in all capital letters is the single word, FRANCE, and on the other Lydia’s loose cursive strikes a blow.
Her mother’s voice is hard and stern, It’s been three months for Christ’s sake. This has to stop. You have to come to terms with the truth.
Lydia stays very still.
Her mother stands up, postcards in her hand, I’m throwing these away. And this isn’t going to happen again. And tomorrow you are seeing a therapist. I have had several suggested to me.
From behind her the hard voice comes again, And you are joining your father and I for dinner tonight. No exceptions and no excuses. I’m not living like this any more.
She eats pizza at the McCall house, Melissa greets her with a soft hug and warm eyes, the boys are loud and long and they take the pressure off her to do anything but smile and ride the wave of their energy. Malia and Kira sit next to her on the couch and their soft smiles buoy her in the moments when she feels as though she may drown.
She has ten missed calls on her cell phone from her mother before she decides to just turn it off and stash her purse in a corner.
During the movie, underneath the smell of popcorn and chocolate ice cream, she can hear Melissa in a hushed conversation with her mother on the phone. She nestles further into the couch cushions and stuffs a handful of popcorn in her mouth.
She sneaks into her own house after midnight, her hair wild from being on the back of Scott’s motorcycle and her lungs feel clear for the first time in too long.
By the light of the streetlamps outside the window, she digs through the kitchen trash and collects her lies back together, ties them in a ribbon and hides them in a shoe box in her closet before turning out the light and pretending to sleep.
The woods hold in them more secrets and deeper shadows than she ever thought a place could have when she was younger, but with Allison and her bow at her side, they also feel like the cool comfort of home after being away for a long while, walking in the door and everything is dark and unused but familiar and comforting even more than ever because of your absence.
You didn’t have to come with me.
It’s not like I have anything better to do. If I stayed home Stiles or Scott would have found a way to make me research-girl again and I’m not really in the mood.
Allison cocks an arrow into the bow with one clean movement and the motion takes her breath away, You could have at least changed your shoes.
If I need to run a marathon you need to give me at least an hour’s notice.
The arrow flies cleanly into its target and Allison smiles to herself, I can’t predict things like that. Isn’t that your job anyway?
She waits, watches the arrows fly across the clearing, counts three and then draws in a deep breath, Yeah that’s what everyone keeps saying.
Allison is standing in front of her before she can blink and not for the first time wonders if there’s a supernatural gene flowing through the Argent bloodline. Soft hands with hard calluses on their thin fingers and palms take hers in theirs, If you’re feeling pressured or if -
I’m fine I swear. I’m just tired.
Allison leans her head down, forehead to forehead, taller always despite her five inch heels, We’re all tired.
It’s been a long year.
It’s gonna be a long life.
Allison’s eyes are hard when she leans back, angling her head to catch those eyes with hers.
It better be. You better not die on me, her voice shakes and Allison's eyes soften slightly.
Allison kisses her softly, lips warm and tongue cold.
In her mind the memory concludes with Allison’s voice saying ‘I promise’ before picking up her bow and continuing with her practice.
But that part is a trick and Lydia knows it.
The office is sterile and cold, pretending to be comforting and warm. Large, heavy furniture giving the illusion of life where there is only a damp sadness.
The therapist pulls her pencil skirt down towards her knees as if that will make the fabric suddenly three inches longer and Lydia wants to give her fashion tips, but the stilettos staring up at her warn against that instinct.
(It would only be harsh words for no reason and she doesn’t have the energy to deal that kind of malice out anymore.)
You’re mother says that you’ve recently suffered a loss that you are having a difficult time coping with. Would you like to talk about that?
If I wanted to talk about it, do you think I’d want to talk to you about it?
Many people have a hard time discussing loss with those closest to them because they feel like they may disappoint them or that they can’t understand. I’m just like a diary. You can tell me anything.
If you were a diary you wouldn’t talk back and my mother wouldn’t be spending $249 a session.
Does the expense bother you?
Your presence bothers me.
The therapist frowns and looks down at her notepad, looking for a clue there that will help her change tactics. Lydia steals herself for what she knows is next.
Is that why you wrote the postcards?
Because you bother me? That wouldn’t make sense because I didn’t know you yet.
Instead of keeping a diary.
What did my mother tell you about the postcards?
She says you wrote a postcard every week for the past three months to your friend, Allison? Whom the postcards claim to be in France.
The postcards don’t claim anything. They aren’t sentient. I was sending them to France.
And why is that?
Because you can’t address postcards to hell.
Do you think Allison is in hell?
I think this is a pointless exercise.
Humor me.
No I don’t think there’s a hell. I don’t think there’s a heaven either. But I think I know Allison, and I know she’d be bored in heaven.
Why is that?
There’s nothing to fight in heaven.
Was Allison a fighter?
Allison was a warrior. If there’s a hell she’s down there trying to rescue every soul there is and kill every demon that gets in her way.
The therapist purses her lips and Lydia knows that she’s thrown her, worries that she’s revealed too much, wonders if she should scramble to take it all back. Instead, she sinks back into the couch and smiles her best, perkiest smile, If there was a hell, I mean.
Where do you think you’ll go if you die?
For a minute Lydia’s stomach lurches and she wants to scream and stomp and deny that death is even on the table. France and hell. A location, a space. Death is a vacuum. Death is emptiness.
Death is an ending.
She’s not ready for that yet.
I’ll go where Allison is.
And if she’s fighting in hell?
Then I’ll kill the fuckers in hell as long as she wants.
And if she’s in heaven?
Then I’ll make her blueberry and peanut butter pancakes and we’ll visit the ocean or sit on a cloud with a harp and sing or whatever the fuck you do in heaven.
So why France?
Lydia looks out the window and watches an orange-brown leaf drift past on a soft breeze and the months ahead loom in her mind, Because in France, she wouldn’t have to fight anymore.
Lydia fixes her eyes on the therapist and stops caring what she exposes, it isn’t as if she isn’t raw and bleeding anyway, In France, she could be happy and free.
You don’t think that death is freeing?
Did my mother tell you that everything on the postcards was a lie? The sudden topic change takes the therapist by surprise, her eyebrows raise and Lydia presses on, because she knows how therapy works and this heaven and hell and France business isn’t getting them anywhere and if she has to be there, they are going to be productive goddamnit. Lies. I sent her lies. I wrote down half-truths, I didn’t tell her the truth.
Do you know why?
Lydia can barely keep her eyes from rolling back in her head, Because if Allison knew I was in pain, she’d be on the next plane back to fix it. She’d stop whatever she was doing, she would let go of her own life to come back here and help me. She’d show up at my doorstep with my favorite ice cream and a copy of Casablanca and she’d braid my hair because I’m hopeless at it and she wouldn’t leave until I was okay.
So if you told the truth…
If I told the truth and she didn’t come back, then it’d all be real. The funeral. Her being gone. Everything.
And you knew this?
Every time I picked up a pen.
Do you think a part of you believed Allison could read the postcards you sent?
Lydia lets one tear roll down her face, but no more because this wasn’t the time or the place, Maybe the smallest part. The rest of me lied because it was the only way I could get out of bed in the morning. Lying is easier if there’s an audience. I made Allison my audience because she couldn’t call me out, she couldn’t make me face the lie.
And now that the lie is gone?
Lydia shook her head, You’re a therapist. Isn’t it your job to know that we all lie to ourselves in a million tiny ways to make it through the day? You lied to yourself this morning when you picked decaf over the extra shot of expresso. You’d like to think that you don’t have a caffeine addiction. You’d like to think that you will make it. But the minute I leave you’re going to run across the street to Starbucks and get that double shot mocha. And you will tell yourself that it’s because I was a difficult patient, that you have a long client list today, that you really just needed the comfort of the smell, that it’s the chocolate you like and not the beans. And you will try again tomorrow. You will lie to yourself and you will know it in every moment that it is a lie. But that doesn’t stop it from helping you. That doesn’t stop it from making you feel stronger. My lies aren’t gone. They are still there. Maybe tomorrow I’ll make new ones and I’ll know that they are lies.
So what hope is there?
The hope is that maybe one day the lies will be true and we can stop telling them. Maybe one day I’ll wake up and really feel like Allison is safe wherever she is. Safe and happy. That’s the biggest lie, I’m surprised I had to spell that out.
What?
The biggest lie. The one I tell myself every time I write FRANCE on an idiotic postcard, isn’t that I’m okay and she doesn’t need to come home. It’s that she’s okay and I don’t need to call her home.
Do you think you could call her home?
Lydia thinks of her scream and the power she isn’t ready to explore and the way Isaac and Scott and Chris Argent look at her with haunted eyes and don’t dare to ask what she can do. Don’t you get it? I don’t want her to come back.
The grass under her thighs tickled pleasantly and she leaned into the warmth of Allison’s thighs under her head a bit more.
Every day should be like this.
Allison flipped through the book in her hands absently, Warm?
Silent. Quiet. No werewolves, no mystery, no disaster. No dead bodies.
Allison pulled a strand of her hair a bit harder than was pleasant, You like the excitement.
I’d like it a lot more of those idiots we call friends listened to us once in a while.
You’re intellect is superior.
You’re everything is superior.
They are silent for a few minutes, she peers up at the clouds and picks out shapes just as they shift and change, Allison reads her book (something simple and silly that she bought as a gag gift last Christmas).
Let’s run away.
Allison’s voice is half amused and half distracted, the hand in her hair soft and languid, Run away to where?
Somewhere where they can’t find us. Where we won’t have to fight anymore.
Allison’s muscles tense, I don’t think there is such a place.
We could find it.
Allison throws her book aside and lays down on her back, I have cousins in France.
Surely there aren’t werewolves in France.
Oh I’m sure there’s hundreds.
So we’ll find a tiny village they won’t be interested in and hide.
You’d get bored.
She shrugs and moves up to lie shoulder to shoulder with Allison, fingers curling around each other, We’ll keep Paris in driving distance so I can shop and visit museums if we get bored.
They both ignore the tear that rolls down Allison’s cheek, Okay France. First chance we get.
It isn’t the first time they lie to themselves.
But to Lydia, it feels like the most important one.
She stops writing postcards and puts her calendar up on the wall and is polite to the therapist and curls her hair and wears mascara every day. She goes out with the girls without having any panic attacks. Her mother leaves on a work trip and doesn’t say when she’ll return.
School starts and her heart has the decency not to hammer when she walks through the doors. She doesn’t think that every brunette out of the corner of her eye is Allison. Kira and Malia and Stiles watch over her in shifts. Isaac and Scott keep a wary but protective distance. Ethan smiles painfully at her and drives her home every night.
Eventually weird things start happening again. There’s only so long that they can all ignore where they live. Lydia barges into Stiles’ room during a pack meeting and gives them all a long and very loud lecture about being included in whatever the hell is going on.
She reminds them more than once that she is smarter than the lot of them.
She helps Malia pick out normal clothes and she talks Kira through her first fight with Scott and she keeps up her GPA and has a weekly study date with Danny and lends Isaac her calculus notes during the full moon.
She lives every day.
She pretends that it stops hurting.
How many times have you lied to your parents?
Allison’s eyes wrinkle, Since moving to Beacon Hill? About a million and half. I think every word I say to them is a lie at this point.
I don’t think I’ve ever told my parents the truth about anything.
Allison shrugs off the black t-shirt and puts it back on the hanger, standing in front of the closet with those long lean hands balanced on steady hips, You should get that checked out.
I say you just go to the party like that.
Allison whirls around to her with a smile etched into her perfect, beautiful face, In just my bra?
She looks down at the magazine in her hands nonchalantly, The boys will start a riot. It’ll be a laugh.
Allison crawls up the bed and throws the magazine to the floor, We could just stay in.
They show up to the party thirty minutes late, a silk scarf around her neck hiding the bite marks Allison’s insistent teeth left behind. They hold hands and dance ridiculously and it is perfect.
They had so few moments that were so carefree, even in the moment Lydia clung to them knowing they wouldn’t last. That they couldn’t continue.
The therapist takes a long sip from her mug of decaf. The mug says “the doctor is in” on it and every time it makes Lydia smile.
Simple jokes like that are the easiest to take for what they are.
Do you still feel like you are lying?
Are you still drowning yourself in decaf?
I’m down to one mocha a day.
One shot or two?
No extra shots, the therapist grins like a young girl and Lydia smiles back.
They are bonded in their lies and it is the strongest bond two people can share.
I’ve always lied, it’s habit now. I couldn’t stop if I tried.
Do you still feel like you are lying to yourself about Allison?
Which lie? Lydia’s eyes sparkle. Whether with unshed tears or with humor, it no longer seems to matter to make a distinction between the two.
About not wanting her to come back.
Lydia shakes her head, I miss her every day. That will never be a lie. But not wanting her to come back will never be a lie either.
Why not?
Because she’d never be at peace here, she’d never stop fighting.
Do you think that one cannot have peace if they are fighting?
Not in this war.
What war, Lydia? Who are you at war with?
No… you don’t understand. For Allison, everything was a fight. Everything was a battle to be won. She never chose the easy way out.
And for you? Is everything a battle for you?
I think… Lydia pauses and looks down at her perfectly trimmed and painted fingernails. I think before Allison I was fighting the wrong things. She showed me what was worth it.
Worth what?
Worth losing for.
Not worth winning?
Lydia’s smile is hard and too wide, If you are winning, you aren’t doing it right.
She visits Allison’s grave for the first time in December, early in the morning when there is still frost on the ground. She doesn’t take flowers because Allison would think they were a waste. (She sees two sets of footprints in the frost and whispers a thank you to Scott and Isaac for leaving her to do this alone.)
She kneels down in front of the grave.
Hi you. A breeze lifts her hair and she has to fight it off of her face. I miss you.
There’s nothing more to say.
It isn’t enough.
Nothing would be enough, probably.
I feel guilty.
Why is that? today the therapist’s mug was chock full of caffeine and that makes Lydia like her more than she’d normally want to.
Because I should have fought for her. I should have dragged the earth looking for a way to bring her back.
Death is permanent, whether we want to believe it or not.
Not in my world. In my world, there is probably a way to bring her back. I could have found it.
Okay… let’s say for a minute that there is a way. And that all you have to do is look for it. Why don’t you?
Like I told you, I don’t want her to come back.
So why do you feel guilty?
Because she would have fought for me. She would have looked for a way, she would never have stopped trying.
Do you think that makes her a better friend than you?
I think that makes her more stubborn than me.
The therapist smiled,Someone more stubborn than you?
You never met Allison.
I wish I could have.
You would have liked her. Everyone liked Allison.
Does everyone like you?
Everyone I want to like me.
Do you think she would be angry at you? If she was sitting in this room right now, do you think she would be angry at you for not finding her.
Yes.
Why?
Because she’d want to be here to fight. She wouldn’t want that choice to be taken from her. She would be angry at me for taking that choice away from her.
Lydia?
If given the choice, she’d come back.
Lydia you didn’t take that choice away from her.
No. Lydia sighed. The person who killed her took that choice away from her. But that’s just semantics, isn’t it? Who took the choice away. Who prohibits her from having the choice again. It’s all the same.
Do you really believe that?
It doesn’t matter what I believe.
I think that all that matters is what you believe.
I think that what matters is what I think Allison would believe.
Would she believe that you were working in her best interest, keeping her safe and away from here?
She would believe that I thought I was doing what was right.
Would that be enough?
It wouldn’t be enough to stop her from being mad. But it would be enough to get her forgiveness.
Oh?
And that’s it. That’s the last lie. The one I’m not ever going to let go of.
That she’d forgive you?
That I’d ever believe she forgave me. If she came back tomorrow, even if it was me that dragged her back, she’d forgive me for not finding her sooner. Immediately. She’d understand.
And the lie?
The lie would be believing her. I wouldn’t. Not really. I’d always be unsure. I’d always be afraid that she couldn’t forgive me after all.
On the desk next to her, the phone buzzes. She peeks at it, Stiles: SOS Come to Scott’s. She scribbles ”Time’s up” at the bottom of the page of her perfect stationary, folds the sheets of scribbled paper carefully and puts them in an envelope. With precision, she licks the envelope and grimaces at the bitter taste, closing the flap carefully and smoothing out the lines completely. She pulls out a shoe box under her bed and adds the envelope to the growing pile and places the lid firmly back on the box.
As she puts on her jacket (one of Allison’s old denim monstrosities) she sends a message back to Stiles.
On my way.
She turns out the light in her bedroom and walks away, her heels clattering on the stairs.
fandom: teen wolf
pairing: lydia/allison, the mccall pack, ofc
word count: ~5,500
recipient: fluffyfrolicker who wanted allydia I like the way you write letters; you don't ramble on like you do when you talk for the october meme
setting: post S3B-AU (disregards S4-canon as I haven't seen it nor want to); Lydia writes a postcard to Allison summering in France every Friday of every week and lies in every one
a/n: I own nothing. No beta. All mistakes are my own (sorry!)
[It's a testosterone fest around here these days. Don't get fat eating all that French cheese.]The weather continues to be hell. Isaac and Scott think that it’s supernatural and I’m really tired of explaining global warming. It’s a testosterone fest around here these days. Did I tell you Stiles went out and rescued a puppy? Don’t get fat eating all that French cheese.
The postcard Lydia picks out at the drugstore has a picture of a beach sunset at it and California! scrawled across the bottom. It’s not like anything they have in Beacon Hills, but that will make Allison smile, so that’s why she slips it into the blue mailbox on Stratton St. with an international stamp taking up half of the space left for the address.
It’s maybe the third or fifth postcard she’s sent that summer.
She never puts a greeting or goodbye on them.
The first one she bought (with a skyline of Sacramento emblazoned on it) she wrote XOXO, Lydia at the bottom.
It ended up at the bottom of the bin at the drugstore in five uneven pieces.
She tried again and got it right the second time. No hi how are you and no farewells.
And definitely no see you soon! at the bottom of her ramblings.
She tries once to write a proper letter. Goes to the best place and buys the nicest stationary, sits at her desk with her multi-colored pens in a neat row. She starts and stops half a dozen times, becomes more efficient at throwing the balled-up scraps of paper into the wastebasket on the other side of the room.
Stiles calls with a Malia emergency and she leaves the stack of blank paper on her desk with a sigh of relief.
Postcards are much easier. There’s only so much space to fill. Only so much white staring up at her, expecting words that she can’t muster up, can’t find within herself to drag up from the recesses of her heart the things that she really ought to say.
I miss you.
I hate you.
How dare you fucking leave?
How am I supposed to live without you?
Come back to me.
But she doesn’t.
She tries to fill them up with words about the others and what they are doing. Has an anecdote about Malia adjusting to being a human in each one. Makes disparaging remarks about Isaac’s lack of competence with hair products and Kira’s newfound obsession with Lydia’s closet. She writes about them in stifled, halting sentences. She writes about a world where they are all together all the time and she is tired of the sight of them. She writes about Scott and Stiles showing up at 3am with fresh donuts and a pirated dvd. She writes about dragging Danny out shopping and how she stopped from him from buying a truly hideous leather jacket.
She fills up the white space with loose, loping script in pink or purple or green or orange ink (never black or blue… she tried that once and it looked too final, too formal, she needs it to be her voice and so it matches the shirt she’s wearing or the necklace at her throat, it carries her across the vastness of space) and it’s happy and content and never too manic.
She never talks too directly about herself. Doesn’t give hints about the spaces in between. Doesn’t mention the nights spent sitting on the floor, eyes wide open staring at the moon, tears flowing down her face. Doesn’t dare give any mention of the number of times Stiles (and Malia sometimes) have stood over her bed looking down at her and begged her to get out of bed, pleading and nearly crying because she hasn’t moved in days.
She talks about 3am donut runs, but doesn’t tell that they eat them on the floor with her in the kitchen, where her mother found her six hours earlier and she hasn’t had the energy to scrape herself off the linoleum and refused food, so she just stayed - staring at nothing. Doesn’t mention that they sit on either side of her and joke and cajole her into eating a donut and set Stile’s laptop on the floor with a chick-flick (something light and happy from beginning to end) and hold her hand. Doesn’t write about her mother finding them hours later, the boys asleep on either side of her and an empty box near them and Lydia still in the same position, her hands in their hands, face dry of the tears she sometimes can’t make fall, her eyes still staring straight ahead, not seeing anything.
She talks about shopping with Danny and going out with Kira and Malia, but doesn’t mention having a panic attack in a shoe store and having Danny carry her outside, holding her on his lap on a bench in the sudden rainstorm until she stops screaming, him calmly telling the security guards not to call the police. Doesn’t mention Kira and Malia holding back and watching her silently as she buys bags of merchandise she throws into a corner and never looks at again, trying not to be afraid of her manic laughter and hysterical eyes.
She writes a postcard once a week and drops it in the mailbox with an international stamp and no return address and it is full of half-lies and almost-truths.
It’s full of her hope that the lies were real.
(It’s mockingly empty.)
Allison reaches up her soft hand and brushes the hair away from Lydia’s face. You talk too much, she says with a smile.
It’s not my fault you missed a whole week of calculus.
Allison’s brow furrows, I was only out three days.
Too long, you missed an entire unit. And don’t even get me started on History!
Allison tugs her down on the bed, pinning her to the bed with the limbs and muscles of an athlete used to getting her way, Don’t start. I just want to rest for a while.
Allison's hair smells like the shampoo she insisted she switch to last month and the thought brings a soft smile to her lips, No rest for the wicked.
Somewhere one of their phone starts to buzz.
Ignore it, Allison whispers, nose cold on her throat, breath hot and warm.
The tell-tale chime of Allison’s phone disturbs the silence and the buzzing begins in earnest, a chorus from each of their purses.
No, Allison’s grip on her waist grows stronger, the leg across her thighs pressing their bodies further into the mattress as if with her simple strength she could make them disappear.
Somewhere in the recesses of Allison’s condo, a phone starts to ring, her father’s voice floats to them with a desperate warning lingering in his baritone.
Allison groans, I just wanted five minutes.
Technically we had an hour.
Yeah, Allison smiles and she can feel the lips curving against her skin raising goosebumps up and down her arms, but you talked about calculus the whole time.
Plenty of people find math stimulating.
Allison presses a hard kiss to her collarbone, more teeth and tongue than lips and there will be a soft mark there for the rest of the day, You’re sexy when you talk about math. I don’t think I learned anything.
I’ll have to just teach you again.
Allison is halfway across the room and she is left on the bed breathless, Please do.
She stops counting the postcards she sends out. She knows that she sends them on Fridays because she can’t stop her internal clock. Things work in sevens. She won’t turn the page on her calendar. She rips it off the wall and throws it under her bed. She puts away her daily planner in a desk drawer under the stationary set she never built up the courage to use. She ignores the pack and the full moon.
There are only seven days.
And then the next seven days.
Time for her is on a loop and if it starts moving in a straight line, her screams may take on a supernatural element.
Derek Hale lingers in her doorway from time to time, talking over her head and never looking her in the eye, making awful proclamations about her powers and needing to understand them and her responsibility to the pack.
She slams the door in his face.
(The third time he comes, she pulls at his neck and presses her tongue between his lips. She’s completely unsurprised when his hands come down to her hips and he pulls her closer to him, his lips and tongue matching hers just like she knew in that split second before she kissed him that they could. She drags her fingers through his hair and wishes she was strong enough to hurt him. She’s the first to pull away and neither one of them is breathless and maybe neither one of them is really embarrassed.
She slams the door in his face for good measure and the next time he comes, they act just as they always have - half annoyed and half exasperated and she thinks that maybe if she pulled him through the door and they fucked on her mother’s couch that maybe their conversations may start flowing a bit easier, but the thought makes her feel trapped and frantic and so she just slams the door in his face.
She’s becoming a creature of habit.)
Allison’s smile is a beacon of light that she has to steal herself from running towards, scolds her feet into clacking down the hallway at an even pace.
That’s a new dress!
Do you like it, she twirls around her heart still and heavy in her chest.
Allison grabs her arms and shakes her head, curls bouncing, Of course I love it! It looks great on you.
I thought I could use a change.
Allison’s nose wrinkles, How many times will you reinvent yourself before Christmas?
At least three more times. Life is too short to get stuck in a rut.
Allison swings her hair over one shoulder and looks down at her books distractedly, Maybe in your next incarnation we can start a band.
Allison and the Rockettes?
Allison slams her locker door shut and smirks, I was thinking ‘Lydia and the Archers’
Kira can be the drummer.
Allison laughs and throws an arm around her shoulders, She’d love that.
Her mother will hate it.
Her father will be our biggest fan.
They walk down the hall and she feels like Allison’s arm around her shoulders is the only thing keeping her from floating.
Twelve weeks after Allison leaves (she’s an expert at lying to herself) (the weeks are ingrained in her bones), she comes home and passes a mail carrier coming down her front walk, they avoid her eyes and she knows that it’s all over.
Her mother is sitting in the living room with a glass of wine in one hand and a stack of postcards on the coffee table in front of her.
On one side in all capital letters is the single word, FRANCE, and on the other Lydia’s loose cursive strikes a blow.
Her mother’s voice is hard and stern, It’s been three months for Christ’s sake. This has to stop. You have to come to terms with the truth.
Lydia stays very still.
Her mother stands up, postcards in her hand, I’m throwing these away. And this isn’t going to happen again. And tomorrow you are seeing a therapist. I have had several suggested to me.
From behind her the hard voice comes again, And you are joining your father and I for dinner tonight. No exceptions and no excuses. I’m not living like this any more.
She eats pizza at the McCall house, Melissa greets her with a soft hug and warm eyes, the boys are loud and long and they take the pressure off her to do anything but smile and ride the wave of their energy. Malia and Kira sit next to her on the couch and their soft smiles buoy her in the moments when she feels as though she may drown.
She has ten missed calls on her cell phone from her mother before she decides to just turn it off and stash her purse in a corner.
During the movie, underneath the smell of popcorn and chocolate ice cream, she can hear Melissa in a hushed conversation with her mother on the phone. She nestles further into the couch cushions and stuffs a handful of popcorn in her mouth.
She sneaks into her own house after midnight, her hair wild from being on the back of Scott’s motorcycle and her lungs feel clear for the first time in too long.
By the light of the streetlamps outside the window, she digs through the kitchen trash and collects her lies back together, ties them in a ribbon and hides them in a shoe box in her closet before turning out the light and pretending to sleep.
The woods hold in them more secrets and deeper shadows than she ever thought a place could have when she was younger, but with Allison and her bow at her side, they also feel like the cool comfort of home after being away for a long while, walking in the door and everything is dark and unused but familiar and comforting even more than ever because of your absence.
You didn’t have to come with me.
It’s not like I have anything better to do. If I stayed home Stiles or Scott would have found a way to make me research-girl again and I’m not really in the mood.
Allison cocks an arrow into the bow with one clean movement and the motion takes her breath away, You could have at least changed your shoes.
If I need to run a marathon you need to give me at least an hour’s notice.
The arrow flies cleanly into its target and Allison smiles to herself, I can’t predict things like that. Isn’t that your job anyway?
She waits, watches the arrows fly across the clearing, counts three and then draws in a deep breath, Yeah that’s what everyone keeps saying.
Allison is standing in front of her before she can blink and not for the first time wonders if there’s a supernatural gene flowing through the Argent bloodline. Soft hands with hard calluses on their thin fingers and palms take hers in theirs, If you’re feeling pressured or if -
I’m fine I swear. I’m just tired.
Allison leans her head down, forehead to forehead, taller always despite her five inch heels, We’re all tired.
It’s been a long year.
It’s gonna be a long life.
Allison’s eyes are hard when she leans back, angling her head to catch those eyes with hers.
It better be. You better not die on me, her voice shakes and Allison's eyes soften slightly.
Allison kisses her softly, lips warm and tongue cold.
In her mind the memory concludes with Allison’s voice saying ‘I promise’ before picking up her bow and continuing with her practice.
But that part is a trick and Lydia knows it.
The office is sterile and cold, pretending to be comforting and warm. Large, heavy furniture giving the illusion of life where there is only a damp sadness.
The therapist pulls her pencil skirt down towards her knees as if that will make the fabric suddenly three inches longer and Lydia wants to give her fashion tips, but the stilettos staring up at her warn against that instinct.
(It would only be harsh words for no reason and she doesn’t have the energy to deal that kind of malice out anymore.)
You’re mother says that you’ve recently suffered a loss that you are having a difficult time coping with. Would you like to talk about that?
If I wanted to talk about it, do you think I’d want to talk to you about it?
Many people have a hard time discussing loss with those closest to them because they feel like they may disappoint them or that they can’t understand. I’m just like a diary. You can tell me anything.
If you were a diary you wouldn’t talk back and my mother wouldn’t be spending $249 a session.
Does the expense bother you?
Your presence bothers me.
The therapist frowns and looks down at her notepad, looking for a clue there that will help her change tactics. Lydia steals herself for what she knows is next.
Is that why you wrote the postcards?
Because you bother me? That wouldn’t make sense because I didn’t know you yet.
Instead of keeping a diary.
What did my mother tell you about the postcards?
She says you wrote a postcard every week for the past three months to your friend, Allison? Whom the postcards claim to be in France.
The postcards don’t claim anything. They aren’t sentient. I was sending them to France.
And why is that?
Because you can’t address postcards to hell.
Do you think Allison is in hell?
I think this is a pointless exercise.
Humor me.
No I don’t think there’s a hell. I don’t think there’s a heaven either. But I think I know Allison, and I know she’d be bored in heaven.
Why is that?
There’s nothing to fight in heaven.
Was Allison a fighter?
Allison was a warrior. If there’s a hell she’s down there trying to rescue every soul there is and kill every demon that gets in her way.
The therapist purses her lips and Lydia knows that she’s thrown her, worries that she’s revealed too much, wonders if she should scramble to take it all back. Instead, she sinks back into the couch and smiles her best, perkiest smile, If there was a hell, I mean.
Where do you think you’ll go if you die?
For a minute Lydia’s stomach lurches and she wants to scream and stomp and deny that death is even on the table. France and hell. A location, a space. Death is a vacuum. Death is emptiness.
Death is an ending.
She’s not ready for that yet.
I’ll go where Allison is.
And if she’s fighting in hell?
Then I’ll kill the fuckers in hell as long as she wants.
And if she’s in heaven?
Then I’ll make her blueberry and peanut butter pancakes and we’ll visit the ocean or sit on a cloud with a harp and sing or whatever the fuck you do in heaven.
So why France?
Lydia looks out the window and watches an orange-brown leaf drift past on a soft breeze and the months ahead loom in her mind, Because in France, she wouldn’t have to fight anymore.
Lydia fixes her eyes on the therapist and stops caring what she exposes, it isn’t as if she isn’t raw and bleeding anyway, In France, she could be happy and free.
You don’t think that death is freeing?
Did my mother tell you that everything on the postcards was a lie? The sudden topic change takes the therapist by surprise, her eyebrows raise and Lydia presses on, because she knows how therapy works and this heaven and hell and France business isn’t getting them anywhere and if she has to be there, they are going to be productive goddamnit. Lies. I sent her lies. I wrote down half-truths, I didn’t tell her the truth.
Do you know why?
Lydia can barely keep her eyes from rolling back in her head, Because if Allison knew I was in pain, she’d be on the next plane back to fix it. She’d stop whatever she was doing, she would let go of her own life to come back here and help me. She’d show up at my doorstep with my favorite ice cream and a copy of Casablanca and she’d braid my hair because I’m hopeless at it and she wouldn’t leave until I was okay.
So if you told the truth…
If I told the truth and she didn’t come back, then it’d all be real. The funeral. Her being gone. Everything.
And you knew this?
Every time I picked up a pen.
Do you think a part of you believed Allison could read the postcards you sent?
Lydia lets one tear roll down her face, but no more because this wasn’t the time or the place, Maybe the smallest part. The rest of me lied because it was the only way I could get out of bed in the morning. Lying is easier if there’s an audience. I made Allison my audience because she couldn’t call me out, she couldn’t make me face the lie.
And now that the lie is gone?
Lydia shook her head, You’re a therapist. Isn’t it your job to know that we all lie to ourselves in a million tiny ways to make it through the day? You lied to yourself this morning when you picked decaf over the extra shot of expresso. You’d like to think that you don’t have a caffeine addiction. You’d like to think that you will make it. But the minute I leave you’re going to run across the street to Starbucks and get that double shot mocha. And you will tell yourself that it’s because I was a difficult patient, that you have a long client list today, that you really just needed the comfort of the smell, that it’s the chocolate you like and not the beans. And you will try again tomorrow. You will lie to yourself and you will know it in every moment that it is a lie. But that doesn’t stop it from helping you. That doesn’t stop it from making you feel stronger. My lies aren’t gone. They are still there. Maybe tomorrow I’ll make new ones and I’ll know that they are lies.
So what hope is there?
The hope is that maybe one day the lies will be true and we can stop telling them. Maybe one day I’ll wake up and really feel like Allison is safe wherever she is. Safe and happy. That’s the biggest lie, I’m surprised I had to spell that out.
What?
The biggest lie. The one I tell myself every time I write FRANCE on an idiotic postcard, isn’t that I’m okay and she doesn’t need to come home. It’s that she’s okay and I don’t need to call her home.
Do you think you could call her home?
Lydia thinks of her scream and the power she isn’t ready to explore and the way Isaac and Scott and Chris Argent look at her with haunted eyes and don’t dare to ask what she can do. Don’t you get it? I don’t want her to come back.
The grass under her thighs tickled pleasantly and she leaned into the warmth of Allison’s thighs under her head a bit more.
Every day should be like this.
Allison flipped through the book in her hands absently, Warm?
Silent. Quiet. No werewolves, no mystery, no disaster. No dead bodies.
Allison pulled a strand of her hair a bit harder than was pleasant, You like the excitement.
I’d like it a lot more of those idiots we call friends listened to us once in a while.
You’re intellect is superior.
You’re everything is superior.
They are silent for a few minutes, she peers up at the clouds and picks out shapes just as they shift and change, Allison reads her book (something simple and silly that she bought as a gag gift last Christmas).
Let’s run away.
Allison’s voice is half amused and half distracted, the hand in her hair soft and languid, Run away to where?
Somewhere where they can’t find us. Where we won’t have to fight anymore.
Allison’s muscles tense, I don’t think there is such a place.
We could find it.
Allison throws her book aside and lays down on her back, I have cousins in France.
Surely there aren’t werewolves in France.
Oh I’m sure there’s hundreds.
So we’ll find a tiny village they won’t be interested in and hide.
You’d get bored.
She shrugs and moves up to lie shoulder to shoulder with Allison, fingers curling around each other, We’ll keep Paris in driving distance so I can shop and visit museums if we get bored.
They both ignore the tear that rolls down Allison’s cheek, Okay France. First chance we get.
It isn’t the first time they lie to themselves.
But to Lydia, it feels like the most important one.
She stops writing postcards and puts her calendar up on the wall and is polite to the therapist and curls her hair and wears mascara every day. She goes out with the girls without having any panic attacks. Her mother leaves on a work trip and doesn’t say when she’ll return.
School starts and her heart has the decency not to hammer when she walks through the doors. She doesn’t think that every brunette out of the corner of her eye is Allison. Kira and Malia and Stiles watch over her in shifts. Isaac and Scott keep a wary but protective distance. Ethan smiles painfully at her and drives her home every night.
Eventually weird things start happening again. There’s only so long that they can all ignore where they live. Lydia barges into Stiles’ room during a pack meeting and gives them all a long and very loud lecture about being included in whatever the hell is going on.
She reminds them more than once that she is smarter than the lot of them.
She helps Malia pick out normal clothes and she talks Kira through her first fight with Scott and she keeps up her GPA and has a weekly study date with Danny and lends Isaac her calculus notes during the full moon.
She lives every day.
She pretends that it stops hurting.
How many times have you lied to your parents?
Allison’s eyes wrinkle, Since moving to Beacon Hill? About a million and half. I think every word I say to them is a lie at this point.
I don’t think I’ve ever told my parents the truth about anything.
Allison shrugs off the black t-shirt and puts it back on the hanger, standing in front of the closet with those long lean hands balanced on steady hips, You should get that checked out.
I say you just go to the party like that.
Allison whirls around to her with a smile etched into her perfect, beautiful face, In just my bra?
She looks down at the magazine in her hands nonchalantly, The boys will start a riot. It’ll be a laugh.
Allison crawls up the bed and throws the magazine to the floor, We could just stay in.
They show up to the party thirty minutes late, a silk scarf around her neck hiding the bite marks Allison’s insistent teeth left behind. They hold hands and dance ridiculously and it is perfect.
They had so few moments that were so carefree, even in the moment Lydia clung to them knowing they wouldn’t last. That they couldn’t continue.
The therapist takes a long sip from her mug of decaf. The mug says “the doctor is in” on it and every time it makes Lydia smile.
Simple jokes like that are the easiest to take for what they are.
Do you still feel like you are lying?
Are you still drowning yourself in decaf?
I’m down to one mocha a day.
One shot or two?
No extra shots, the therapist grins like a young girl and Lydia smiles back.
They are bonded in their lies and it is the strongest bond two people can share.
I’ve always lied, it’s habit now. I couldn’t stop if I tried.
Do you still feel like you are lying to yourself about Allison?
Which lie? Lydia’s eyes sparkle. Whether with unshed tears or with humor, it no longer seems to matter to make a distinction between the two.
About not wanting her to come back.
Lydia shakes her head, I miss her every day. That will never be a lie. But not wanting her to come back will never be a lie either.
Why not?
Because she’d never be at peace here, she’d never stop fighting.
Do you think that one cannot have peace if they are fighting?
Not in this war.
What war, Lydia? Who are you at war with?
No… you don’t understand. For Allison, everything was a fight. Everything was a battle to be won. She never chose the easy way out.
And for you? Is everything a battle for you?
I think… Lydia pauses and looks down at her perfectly trimmed and painted fingernails. I think before Allison I was fighting the wrong things. She showed me what was worth it.
Worth what?
Worth losing for.
Not worth winning?
Lydia’s smile is hard and too wide, If you are winning, you aren’t doing it right.
She visits Allison’s grave for the first time in December, early in the morning when there is still frost on the ground. She doesn’t take flowers because Allison would think they were a waste. (She sees two sets of footprints in the frost and whispers a thank you to Scott and Isaac for leaving her to do this alone.)
She kneels down in front of the grave.
Hi you. A breeze lifts her hair and she has to fight it off of her face. I miss you.
There’s nothing more to say.
It isn’t enough.
Nothing would be enough, probably.
I feel guilty.
Why is that? today the therapist’s mug was chock full of caffeine and that makes Lydia like her more than she’d normally want to.
Because I should have fought for her. I should have dragged the earth looking for a way to bring her back.
Death is permanent, whether we want to believe it or not.
Not in my world. In my world, there is probably a way to bring her back. I could have found it.
Okay… let’s say for a minute that there is a way. And that all you have to do is look for it. Why don’t you?
Like I told you, I don’t want her to come back.
So why do you feel guilty?
Because she would have fought for me. She would have looked for a way, she would never have stopped trying.
Do you think that makes her a better friend than you?
I think that makes her more stubborn than me.
The therapist smiled,Someone more stubborn than you?
You never met Allison.
I wish I could have.
You would have liked her. Everyone liked Allison.
Does everyone like you?
Everyone I want to like me.
Do you think she would be angry at you? If she was sitting in this room right now, do you think she would be angry at you for not finding her.
Yes.
Why?
Because she’d want to be here to fight. She wouldn’t want that choice to be taken from her. She would be angry at me for taking that choice away from her.
Lydia?
If given the choice, she’d come back.
Lydia you didn’t take that choice away from her.
No. Lydia sighed. The person who killed her took that choice away from her. But that’s just semantics, isn’t it? Who took the choice away. Who prohibits her from having the choice again. It’s all the same.
Do you really believe that?
It doesn’t matter what I believe.
I think that all that matters is what you believe.
I think that what matters is what I think Allison would believe.
Would she believe that you were working in her best interest, keeping her safe and away from here?
She would believe that I thought I was doing what was right.
Would that be enough?
It wouldn’t be enough to stop her from being mad. But it would be enough to get her forgiveness.
Oh?
And that’s it. That’s the last lie. The one I’m not ever going to let go of.
That she’d forgive you?
That I’d ever believe she forgave me. If she came back tomorrow, even if it was me that dragged her back, she’d forgive me for not finding her sooner. Immediately. She’d understand.
And the lie?
The lie would be believing her. I wouldn’t. Not really. I’d always be unsure. I’d always be afraid that she couldn’t forgive me after all.
On the desk next to her, the phone buzzes. She peeks at it, Stiles: SOS Come to Scott’s. She scribbles ”Time’s up” at the bottom of the page of her perfect stationary, folds the sheets of scribbled paper carefully and puts them in an envelope. With precision, she licks the envelope and grimaces at the bitter taste, closing the flap carefully and smoothing out the lines completely. She pulls out a shoe box under her bed and adds the envelope to the growing pile and places the lid firmly back on the box.
As she puts on her jacket (one of Allison’s old denim monstrosities) she sends a message back to Stiles.
On my way.
She turns out the light in her bedroom and walks away, her heels clattering on the stairs.