this is a warning sign, a battle cry by argle_fraster

[turnonmyheels.livejournal.com]

Fandom: TEEN WOLF
Pairing: gen Lydia Martin, Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale
Length: 9253
Author on LJ: argle_fraster
Author Website: at AO3
Why this must be read: This is set/written post season 1; therefore it has been Jossed. That doesn't make it irrelevant though. Canon more or less forgot that Lydia has fans, people who want to see her struggle back to herself -- even if she realizes who she was isn't who she wants to be. The fic has a dreamy feel, it can be a little purple with the prose, BUT! BUT! It's so *good*. Heed the warnings if you have triggers. Lydia is in a dark place and she struggles a lot before she takes back her life.


After school one day, she smells something sweet in her room when she gets home. It's the wrong kind of sweet, the kind that smells like him. She almost falls over when she walks in the door because her breath catches and her pulse jumps; she feels like she just ran three miles. She can't breathe. It's in her room, he's put it in her room - she throws herself to the ground. She can see it growing out of the carpet. It's blue and purple and overpowering, and it's clouding up her mind.

She rips the carpet free from the corner before she realizes she's crying. It's the ugly sort of crying; the kind where she's hiccupping sobs that ache all the way out, that nearly make her keel over with the force like her body can't possibly withstand the onslaught. She tears at the carpet, desperate to find the source.

Everything is purple and blue and Peter Hale.

It's only when things get red that she stops. She's bleeding - ripping up the carpet has driven staples into her cuticles, and her nails are ravaged. There's blood all over the bits she hasn't managed to pull up from the boards yet. She tries to suck in air and her lungs have stopped working. She wants to scream, and she doesn't have the oxygen to get the sound out. When she presses a hand against her lips, she can taste the copper pang of the blood.

As she cries, low and anguished and desperate, Lydia looks up at her vanity.

There are flowers there: roses. Pink, her favorite color. There's a note amidst the blooms and she can't read the words, but she does know her mother's handwriting. It's the usual gift when her mother feels a stab of guilt for not paying enough attention to her. A consolation prize, of sorts: dearest Lydia, sorry I'm not here for you. Love, Mom.

Roses, not wolfsbane.

this is a warning sign, a battle cry