Broken Kiss (a Teen Wolf story)

Part 23

Lydia woke slowly, her head full of fuzz and blank spaces. She must have gotten into her mom’s wine stash – what was left of it. She shifted, and the surface beneath her shifted as well. The surface that was firmer than her bed, and rougher than her sheets. It was also emitting a lot of heat. She looked up, blinking against the brilliance of a pair of half-lidded blue eyes.

            Peter, holding her while she slept.

            She shot upright, one hand raised to ward off…nothing. No ghouls, no gods, none of that lifeless gray. They were back at the lake house, on the couch in front of the dying fire.

            “Lydia?” he asked, sounding surprised. She shoved her tangled hair away from her face.

            “Why do you sound like that? Did you not know who you were holding?”

            “I knew.”

            As the blue faded in his eyes she could see the bruising around them. And the scraps and cuts, half-healed and angry, on his arms and neck. It all came back to her, the dark and the cold, Allison – she pressed a hand against the ache in her stomach – and Hades. The god’s voice had slipped into her mind as she wavered between life and death. It had been calm, almost comforting, and richer the closer she got to him. But it hadn’t been the voice she’d wanted to hear, and she’d spilled the secrets of his errant citizens and demanded he send them back immediately. It had been a surprise that a being of such power could also be forthright, but then most of the powerful creatures she’d encountered had also been insane.

            He’d transported them back to the Earthly plane in an instant, but not before Peter had started to crack. She’d heard the strain of feeling in every word, the desperate of every syllable. And the necklace she wore ensured she would never forget. How long had she waited for someone to know her, to love her for what she was? Despite, now, what she was?

            And what kind of cosmic joke was it that he was the one?

            She squirmed out from under a thick throw blanket and his hands, which were slightly more difficult to remove.

            “Lydia.”

            “I need to get cleaned up.”

            And away from him. She couldn’t handle him in such a raw state, not knowing that he was going to revert back. He’d start smiling again, then smirking. Teasing, but never talking. He’d go away again, and she’d be left with the perfect memory of this one time when he actually felt something for her.

            She climbed the stairs in a daze and stepped into the shower, too numb to really tell if it was hot or cold. She expected the fine silt of the underworld to rain off of her. But none of it had come back with them. How was that possible? She’d gone to an entirely other universe and none of it had come back with her. She’d almost died there, the strange land sapping her vitality with each step on the uneven ground, with each breath of the not-quite-air. The experience had almost killed her, but it would be invisible to everyone else. Her mother wouldn’t know. Her friends would listen to her. Stiles would probably even be upset, tenderly indignant that he hadn’t been there for her, until he got distracted again.

            Allison might not even remember it. She’d move through that endless twilight, becoming sharper and shadowier, and probably thrilling in it. And Lydia would be stuck here, having to suck it up and forge ahead even though she had no idea what she was doing.

            She raised her face to the spray, turning the water until it was almost burning hot. If only she could wash it all away… And then what? Go back to what she had been? Pretending to be stupid and laughing at boys’ dumb jokes? Study for SATs and pretend the world wasn’t stranger and crueler than she’d ever imagined?

            No, she couldn’t go back. She wouldn’t. There was no point to pretending that things were anything other than uncertain and scary. But she could still navigate. She could still figure her way through. Starting with the man waiting for her downstairs.