Author's note: Written for stydia-fanfiction on tumblr for the prompt: "A prank war between the boys and the girls gets a little out of hand. Angst, hurt feelings, and lots of fighting and yelling. Finally, they decide the whole prank war was a dumb idea and "can we just forget this ever happened and move forward? Because I love you and I would never truly want to hurt you.""
Summary: A prank war between the boys and the girls gets a little out of hand, and Lydia just wants it to stop.
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It started out innocently, like all good pranks do.
In truth, it was never even a prank to begin with.
It just happened, and it most definitely wasn't supposed to escalate so quickly, alas it did. An innocent scare turned into a game to see who would scare someone next, and now no one's really talking to anyone because they all fear the next time they'll be pranked, and when they are all hell breaks loose. Sure, it was fun at first but pranks started evolving with time, and after a while it wasn't so harmless anymore.
Lydia likes to think a part of why it got somewhat out of hand is because youth was stolen from them and keeps being taken away every time they have to fight for their lives, so it became a coping mechanism of sorts, a much needed distraction from their usual worries. But now... Now it's not funny anymore.
She can't remember the last time the pack had an afternoon together without pranks that, honestly, are just plain stupid at this point, and it's senseless that they're all getting worked up because of it when they could easily just be spending time together and enjoying the rest of their last summer before they head off to college.
Instead, she misses them.
Lydia misses the plain old hanging out with the people who mean the most to her.
Most of all, she misses him.
Especially now that they were getting closer so effortlessly and Lydia messed it up by starting this whole thing without meaning to.
It's only one of the reasons why Lydia is so frustrated right now. Frustrated with herself for kicking this off, frustrated with the others – and again, herself – for making it a thing. She's tired of it, tired of it all and she just wants it to stop already.
"If this is another prank, I swear to god..." she mutters to herself under her breath, turning around a corner in the dark house that the pack is investigating, and of course all of them very conveniently parted ways and are looking around by themselves.
She hears a noise in the distant end of the hallway she's in, but truth is Lydia can barely see a foot in front of her nose for everything is engulfed in darkness, let alone what's so far away, so she stops abruptly, alert.
It's like she's in a freaking haunted house and it's making her skin crawl.
Lydia listens in attentively but nothing else happens so after a minute she continues, finding all doors on her path locked.
This is stupid, she thinks to herse-
Lydia hears footsteps all of a sudden, stomping hard on the floor and approaching fast, but from which way she can't really tell. She has a bad feeling about this.
Giving in to instinct, Lydia starts running in what she can only hope it's the right direction for she doesn't know where she's going, and turning around another corner she instantly thinks she made the wrong decision when her small frame collides with something – someone – in full force.
