voluntaryapnea

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19.

[Audio -- Open]

[The comm clicks onto audio and there's a moment of silence before a familiar voice -- albeit more tired than usual -- makes an announcement that it's clear he'd rather not be making. Because he'd rather not be making it.]

Dean's in a coma.

[He pauses, rubs a hand over his eyes tiredly as he looks down at his inmate, unconscious in bed and purses his lips.]

I'll let everyone know when he's awake again unless he does it first.

[He shuts the comm back off and sinks into a chair beside Dean's bed, closing his eyes.]

[Spam -- Open]

[He's exhausted. His body aches. He wants to crawl into bed and sleep for the next week. He won't, of course, because he has things to do. People to check on. But he's in dire need of his Adderall because he's been without it for a month. On the list of things that he'd needed, that they'd all needed on the other barge, Adderall hadn't even made the list. His mind is racing with thoughts and he can't seem to be able to focus on any one thought for another.

He's back on the regular barge, and he needs to find Scott and make sure he's okay. He needs to find Lydia and make sure she's been okay. Allison, Kira, Isaac, Erica, Needy, Bucky, Steve. Hell, even Jackson. He needs to check on all of them and see for himself they're all right. Rest isn't going to happen until he's made the rounds.

But medication first. He makes his way down the steps toward the seventh floor and his room. He can be encountered in any of the stairwells, or the seventh floor corridor.]

[Spam -- Closed to Lydia]

[He slips his key into the door and unlocks it, pushes it open even as he rubs the back of his neck. He freezes instantly, gaze locking on Lydia's form as she sits on the edge of his bed. He lets out a shaky breath and closes the door behind him, letting his hands drop to his sides.]

Hi.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[She's crying. It's a mix of relief to have him back and just being overwhelmed by having him back. Not having spent any real time apart since-- since they became closer. Only a few days while the Nogitsune had him. A whole month is a lot.

And then it gets worse when he speaks up and she realizes he's crying, too.]

I'm okay. Are you? Are you hurt? [Between her conversation with Allison and the fact that he's crying, she's more than a little worried now, so she pulls back to look at him, too. Even though she can't see much in the darkness, she reaches to cup his cheek and blindly brush his tears away.]

[They're both crying, and for him it's partially from relief because they're all back where they're supposed to be -- kind of, and partially because he's reached the end of what he can handle mentally and emotionally.]

No. I'm okay. I just -- Scott. [It's harder to speak now, his chest is tight and he has to shut his eyes when her fingers brush against his skin because he's barely holding it together now that it's all over. Now there's nothing left to do but survive all the fallout and there's going to be a lot of it.] Scott died there.

[His voice is hushed, and he drops his head.]

I couldn't keep him safe.

[She feels like he's about to collapse in her arms and she doesn't know if she'll be strong enough to hold him up if he does, so she slowly but steadily guides him over to the bed.

But then he speaks and she stills, eyes widening.]

But he's okay, right? He came back? [The other admiral isn't as reliable as this one, she knows it. But this Admiral wouldn't have left him there right.

She guides him the rest of the way and sits down on the edge of the bed with him. She can barely process what he's telling her. Because this is Scott. And nothing can happen to him. Too many people need him. Stiles needs him. She needs him.

So she'll ignore the voice reminding her what happened with the werewolf version of Stiles and focus on what this one has to say.]

Yeah.

[He sits without argument because he's tired. Drained is more like it. He leans against her, their shoulders pressed together as he stares down at his hands through blurry eyes.]

Yeah, he's back. But I don't think he's okay. How can he be okay? How can you be okay?

[How can any of them be okay? It's ridiculous. They're just a bunch of teenagers, and sure Scott's a werewolf and Lydia's a banshee, and he was once possessed by a demonic trickster, but at the end of the day, they're still kids.

All you really do is show up and find the bodies.]

Because I have you.

[And it became so clear for her in these past few weeks just how much she needs him, how much she all of them. How much they changed her for the better.

She wraps an arm around his back, pulling him closer to her.]

And Allison and Scott. Because we have each other. Even if we're not okay now, we will be. [This is what she's been telling the mirrors all this time and she believes that being part of the pack will help them get back on their feet.]

[He nods even if he's not sure it's really all that simple. They could have the biggest pack in the universe and he's still not sure it would really help that much when it came to things like your best friend dying.

He leans against her heavily, letting her pull him close and resting his head against her shoulder. He closes his eyes and tries to steady his breathing, to focus on the fact that he's back, that this is his Lydia, that things are going to start getting better now because they literally couldn't get worse than they already had. Part of him wants to crawl in the shower and let the hot water help cleanse him of the need he feels to climb out of his own skin. The other part of him knows it won't work. Scott would still have died. Allison would still be dead back home. Lydia still died here.

How is it that out of the four of them, he's the only one who's managed to survive through it all? Everyone around him keeps dying, and yet he's lived. Is that what hell is? Knowing that everyone you love is being tortured to literal death and that the one person who should die is you and yet you survive?]

[She can't help but remember the night after Jackson got there. When she just broke down on him and he just held her and told her it was going to be okay. In a way, it was. She knew. No matter how hard it was to get through to Jackson, she had managed so far.

But now he needed her to do the same for him. And she had no idea where to even begin because aside from something going terribly wrong with Scott, she had no idea what had happened on the other Barge.

She kept an arm around his back but turned a little more toward him, lifting a hand to brush at his hair as she pressed her lips to the top of his head.]

You're back now. We're all together and we can protect each other here. Scott's safe.

Whatever happened there is over, Stiles.

[Of course she'd been having success with Jackson. She was Lydia. In Stiles' mind there wasn't much of anything she couldn't do successfully when she set herself on it.

But he'd always had a great amount of faith in certain people. His dad, Scott. Lydia. It's always been himself he doesn't have faith in at the end of the day. But that's neither here nor there.]

Yeah. I just -- I need to check on him here but I need -- I just need a minute.

[With her. He needs a minute with her.]

[She closes her eyes at his words and nods to herself. She doesn't want to leave, she doesn't want to be anywhere else now that he's back. She's missed him and she wants to help comfort him.

But as far as he knows, his request seems to be pretty clear. She doesn't know where she's gonna go and what she's gonna do, but if this is what he wants.]

I can go. [She whispers, even though she makes no move to get up. She can't really, not with the way he's leaning on her. But he never really asked her to be there in the first place.]

What? No.

[He lifts his head, then lifts a hand to her cheek, leaning in and pressing a kiss to her forehead. Give Lydia a kiss, Allison had said. This probably isn't what she meant. He's sure it isn't. But for now it'll have to suffice because it's been a month since he's seen her and there is so much more to consider now than there had been.]

I don't want you to go. I just -- I need to check on Scott and make sure he's back and okay, but...I don't want you to go.

[He looks down and lets out a breath, rubbing his hand over his face tiredly.]

[Lydia closes her eyes for a moment as he presses his lips to her forehead, sighing softly in relief as he tells her he doesn't want him to go.]

It's okay. I don't wanna go anywhere. [She reaches over and cups the hand he has over his face.]

You look [terrible] exhausted, Stiles. Why don't you check on Scott and get some rest? I can stay. [She wants to stay. She wants to rest, too. She's been exhausted herself. But his, Scott's, Allison's, Kira's and the rest of the pack safety comes first.]

[He relaxes at that admission, nodding slightly and pulling her close again. This time he rests his forehead on her shoulder, exhaling slowly.]

Exhausted's a pretty accurate descriptor. [But there's one thing he has to know before he goes anywhere.]

He was here right? Other me? He was here.

[When he relaxes, she does too, shifting closer to him again as she brushes her fingers over his hair then lays her cheek over his head when he leans on her again. It's a relief just to have him there.]

Yeah. He was here. [So were Scott, Allison and worst of all: Kira.]

And you were there with the other me, right?

[He nods at her confirmation and he closes his eyes for a moment, lifting his head to look at her again.]

Yeah. She helped me a lot over there.

[His words are quiet and he searches her eyes.]

[She lets her hand drop down from his hair to cup his face as he pulls away. And she wants to lean in and press her lips to his, but she doesn't know what happened. She doesn't know what he's been through so she doesn't. Not yet, anyway.

The words surprise her, though.]

She didn't hurt you?

[He leans into her touch, and shakes his head just a little, not pulling away from her.]

She didn't hurt me. She helped. Every time I needed help, she helped me. She helped get medical supplies when Bucky needed them, and -- [He hesitates for a second, shifting and revealing the more recent bite marks on his neck.] She went after Jerry after he bit me.

[Lydia can barely make out the bite marks on his neck, but she can feel them as she very gently runs her fingers over them.]

Stiles-- what did he do to you? [She thought about them, about how they were doing over there every day for the past month. But she always tried to fool herself into thinking that at least they were together. That they were okay.

That obviously wasn't the case.]

What did she do?

[He closes his eyes as she brushes her fingers over the healing wound.]

He would have done a lot more if Dean hadn't shown up when he did. He just bit me. I'm okay. I didn't -- I didn't turn or anything. [His voice wavers just a bit at the word turn. Because Jerry hadn't turned him, but he'd sure as hell turned others. Chris. Mickey.]

She set him on fire. With a Molotov cocktail.

[Lydia sighs in relief and nods, pulling her hand away from the wounds and resting it over the back of his neck.]

I wish we could do something to him that'd just-- get rid of his fangs permanently or something. But I guess walking around with Molotov cocktails is a good enough start.

I-- talked to the other Jerry. The one who was here. He was human, and a vampire hunter.

Yeah. [He nods, relaxing a little, even though he winces at the mention of other Jerry.] Yeah. I know. I uh -- I remember him. From the Arena. I remember [scaring the shit out] him.

[He bites his lip for a second and then reaches up and moves her hand off the back of his neck, linking his fingers through hers.]

He didn't hurt you, right?

[His voice is hushed now.]

Other me, I mean.

[She wraps her fingers around his instantly, smiling softly both at the memory of the look on his other self's face when she took his hand for the first time. And at the reminder that her Stiles is back. It's enough to make her eyes tear up slightly.]

No. He didn't. He wouldn't, Stiles.

He's not you. But he still wants to be good. He was-- I think he was better by the time he left. More hopeful.

[He exhales, shutting his eyes as he nods. He was pretty sure his other self wouldn't hurt any version of Lydia that existed. Or any version of Scott. It was everyone else that he was a danger to.]

I have his memories. Some of them. Up until we split after the Arena.

[He looks down at the floor.]

His Scott died at the Glen Capri.

I know. [He didn't say in so many words, she just knew that he died, and she assumed she knew when. But now she can picture it happening and-- that makes it so much worse.

So she squeezes his hand tightly.]

Don't, Stiles. Look at me. Don't think about. Not now.

You're back. And your Scott is okay. [No matter how much she hopes that the other Stiles is okay too, that he found his Lydia, at least. And that they can help each other start over.]

[The sudden, tight pressure on his hand pulls him away from that horrible memory and he looks up at her with watery eyes, nodding.]

Yeah. Yeah, I know. I just...I get it. Why he snapped. I get it. [He wipes at his eyes with the back of his free hand before sniffing and exhaling slowly.]

I wasn't sure we were gonna get back here. I mean usually it doesn't take this long for one of these kinds of things to be done, but the longer it went on...I just wasn't sure.

You didn't know... of course you didn't. [She knew the Admiral from there didn't communicate with them as often. And considering their Admiral had a hard time catching up to the other Barge...

Her chest is tight all of the sudden and she squeezes his hand before letting go and brushing the tears from his face gently, even though her own eyes are tearing up.]

I'm so sorry you had a whole month without knowing. We were trying to catch up to you all along.

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