CHASING PHANTOMS // TEEN WOLF [bxb]

LURKING SHADOWS

***

True to their suspicions, Allison had nearly sent an arrow straight through Lydia's head while practicing her archery in the preserve yesterday so it was safe to say she was in the same category as Scott and Stiles.

"Hallucinations, sleep paralysis, near murder, sudden onset dyslexia, yeah, you guys are totally fine," Lydia nodded sarcastically as they all sat at one of the picnic tables outside during their lunch period. She was slightly smug considering everyone wasn't looking at her like she was the crazy one for once.

They'd spent the last few minutes debriefing what had happened to all three of them, with the newest addition to the long line of experiences coming from Stiles's weird sign language classroom. Considering yesterday included Allison's attempted, albeit accidental, murder, Scott's loss of control, and Stiles night terrors and inability to read, they were faring quite well today.

"What about you? Aren't you supposed to be the one seeing freaky shit?" Isaac bluntly asked Jake with a thoughtful expression like he was really trying to wrap his head around it.

"Honestly? I'm really relieved I'm not," Jake winced sympathetically at his friends. After the Darach thing, he needed a break from seeing phantoms and mutilated faces in his dreams and waking hours. That didn't mean he wanted his friends to suffer, though, because he knew first hand how horrible it was. 

"I told you it felt nice to not be the crazy one for once," Lydia hummed, shrugging innocently at Allison when her best friend gave her another look at calling her crazy.

"So what happens to someone who has a near death experience and comes out of it either seeing things, not being able to tell what's real, or haunted by dead relatives?" Scott asked with his hands out in front of him as if to ask did I get everything? He wanted to put them back on track because they didn't have much time left in the period to talk.

"Hmm, let me think about that," Isaac hummed sarcastically. "Oh yeah! They're all locked up because they're insane," he nodded as it came to him.

"Hey, Lydia and I successfully avoided solitary confinement so they can too," Jake defended on their behalf. He felt like he and Lydia were pretty fair measures of clinically insane without actually being insane so they could serve as a metric baseline.

"Do you have a single helpful bone in your body?" Stiles asked Isaac with his head leaning against a hand exasperatedly. He was ten seconds from throwing his pen at the other boy's face if he kept up with the commentary.

"Well, you know, half my childhood was spent in a freezer so that's kind of foreign to me," Isaac continued in a snarky tone.

"Oh, we're still milking that?" Stiles scoffed in full blown exasperation as he dropped his hand from his head in annoyance

"Yeah, we're still milking that," Isaac confirmed steadfastly, about to say something else when they were interrupted by a girl he didn't recognize but was admittedly quite pretty.

"Hi, sorry, I, uh, couldn't help but overhear what you guys were talking about?" Kira spoke uncertainly as she held her books close to her body for emotional support. She realized they were all looking at her expectantly so she awkwardly laughed and then switched it to clearing her throat.

"I think I might know- well, what you're talking about sounds like the Tibetan word Bardo. It literally means 'in-between state' because, you know, it's the state between life and death," Kira explained nervously as she looked between them.

Lydia looked a mix of impressed and confused as to why they were approached by this girl she'd never seen before. "And what do they call you?" she asked in intrigue. Pretty and smart, just her type of friend.