.

.

throw roses into the abyss
and say:

here's my thanks

to the monster who didn't succeed
in swallowing me alive

.

.

This is a creation story.

This is picking flowers and the earth swallowing you whole and pomegranate seeds.

This is beauty wielding the bow and the huntress harnessing her moon before falling prey herself.

This is the fallen brother, hiding in shadows in his underworld, manipulation and narcissus.

But not like you know.

.

.

Two weeks. Two weeks since Allison died.

Ever since it'd felt like Lydia's ears were under water. Everything around her was suddenly muffled, far away in some place that wasn't where she was. She pretended she was. She smiled at Malia as she walked by in the hallway and she rolled her eyes at Stiles in class but all the while she traced tiny, erratic swirling circles on her notebook and found herself reading sentences three, four, five times before giving up and answering her homework questions without doing the reading.

Everything muffled. And a slight ringing. Her eyes were glassy and wide and empty more often than she'd like them to be. Her sadness caused a stillness in her that was heavy and weighted. It was how she felt when she shifted her car into drive and set out in the weighty, heavy silence of the night on autopilot, towards an unknown but familiar destination.

And when the heavy door rolled open on its tracks she froze, suddenly buzzing. Suddenly sharp.

"Derek's not here," he said, arm leaning on the edge of the frame.

"That's fine," she said, dumbstruck, unsure how she'd ended up in front of Peter. She floated past him and into the loft, scanning the spare room for something to focus on. "I assume you've heard."

She heard the door heave shut. "Another Argent down. Can't say I'm surprised," he said, a shrug in his voice.

"No?" she said and drew a finger along the Hale's wooden table and left a shiny clean line in the dust. "Most people would be more surprised at your supposed nine lives." Lydia still wouldn't look at him. But took a turn about the room with slow, thick, clunks of her heels. There was so much wood.

"Funny thing about running headlong into battle is…one day you're gonna get hit." She could hear the own slow tap of his shoes working their way clockwise, coming closer to meet her aimless wandering in from of the window panes. "I only fight if I have to."

She turned and spun on her heel and he was closer than she'd thought. Some inches away, awash in the city lights streaming through the glass panes.

"I've noticed," she said pointedly.

Peter held her gaze for a long moment. Too long. She knew those eyes of a younger man who deceived her in her own mind all too well.

She spun away again, running a hand over the back of each dining chair, circling slowly. He fell in tow, but distantly, circling like a cat.

"Do you know what I used to be like?" She asked, but he simply followed cautiously as she turned her first corner of the long table. "Confident. Assured. Man-Eater. I know archaic latin, did you know that?"

She felt his eyes on her so intently that it cut through the melancholy fog she'd been stuck in for weeks. "Just for fun. I was going to win the Field's Medal one day…" she trailed off with her footsteps. She felt drained of marrow from her bones. They were rickety and it was hard to hold herself up.

"And now?" he asked in a low voice.

"Haunted. Crazy. Confused," she breathed in. "Scared…all the time." She barely spoke the final words, they caught in her throat and escaped in a vacuum-like whisper.

"You don't have to be," he said and it sounded to her like the most earnest thing she could remember from his lips. "You're extroadinary." His eyes flashed a glowing blue before he hung his head. "The power you possess."

"You used me," she said, stronger now. Not an accusation, but a fact.

"I did."

"And now?" she mimicked. "I don't possess power. It possesses me. I'm still used."

Silence hung in the air like dread. He was looking at her the same way he had when she'd discovered him alive and well in this very loft. His eyes meeting hers, then dropping. Low, sincere, oddly ashamed. Why had she found herself here in the middle of the night anyway? Her self consciousness grew, and she gripped a knob on the chair in front of her as if she could screw it off.

She gulped. "Well," and she did her best to put her best haughty game face on. "You can drive me home. Since it it doesn't seem like you do very much of anything around here anyway. And I don't want to end up at another evil degenerate person's industrial loft dungeon with even deeper V-necks than you."

She turned and began to stalk towards the door.

"There she is," she heard him wisp behind her as his keys jingled and she couldn't help the side of her mouth from turning up.

She tried not to notice his reflection in the passenger's window as he drove her car out of downtown and onto the windy roads of the neighborhoods. Every now and then a passing vehicle would send light streaming through the windshield and she could see his eyes flickering and his jaw clenching and unclenching slightly.

She was so tired that her eyes drifted closed and only opened when she heard the click of the doors being unlocked and felt the stillness seep out of the shut off engine. Lydia peeled herself out of the car without a word and before she could just shut the door and stagger to her bed he strained his neck forward from the driver's seat to grab her gaze.

"Remember sweetheart, I created you," he said and she looked away.

No, she thought. You opened up the earth on the football field and you tethered me to the dead.

"Lydia-"

but she was gone.

.

.

That night she fell into a deep sleep. One she wouldn't remember, for she slept through the night and school the next day and in to the evening.

But somewhere deep down in the pit of her dreams she realized she wasn't alone. It seemed a presence followed her everywhere but didn't take shape.

She was walking on a sleek black floor, a dark black cube with no walls or ends or lines. But the surface beneath her bare feet was so cold it seared through her legs and up to her arms so she crossed them and shivered.

"Allison?" she called.

But there was nothing. Just nothing. But the black.

And then a field of daisies. Gold and yellow and orange and swaying in a warm spring breeze. And her hair was in its braid crown and she picked them one by one to deposit them in a woven basket at her arm. She found a particularly beautiful one. So bright and vibrant it looked like the sun. Allison would love it, she thought and dipped her hand below the grass to grip it by the root. But when she tugged the flower didn't come with her. The earth shook and soft dirt began to sift through cracks below her feet, revealing the roots of the flower beneath the earth, which were ugly and withered and gray. They snaked around her ankles and took hold, pulling her down and down and down and down.

.

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So yeah. This is essentially: badass-takes-no-prisoners-blood-thirsty-ruthless-ascension-to-power Lydia.

Note: This is Lydia centric with heavy Peter/Lydia and shades of Allison and Isaac/Allison will feature too. Other characters and combos could pop up though because this might take me into unknown territory. Hopefully a person reads this idk.

Also: The title comes from the awesome poem "Persephone Lied"