Lydia

Stiles woke to the sound of his phone ringing, a sharp piercing melody that set of a pounding in his head. The sun outside his window was high in the sky and his clock told him that he must have fallen asleep after sunrise as it was now almost three pm. He wondered where hiss father was, and what he was thinking. Shivering again he picked up his cell.

"Mmmph," he answered incoherently.

"Stiles, I've been calling you all afternoon!" Scott announced excitedly on the other side of the line.

"Why?" He asked.

"Dude, Lydia's awake!" He said, and instantly Stiles forgave him everything and sat up with a jerk in his bed.

"I'm on my way," he said and clicked off without hearing Scott trying to tell him something else.

He scrambled out of bed and ran into the shower, scrubbing his skin quickly under the scalding hot spray. He wasn't thinking about last night or Peter, instead he was concentrating on something positive. Lydia was going to be okay, which kind of meant that Peter hadn't killed anyone innocent. Not that it excused him.

Stiles' head thunked against the tiles. So much for not thinking about Peter.

An hour and a half later he was dressed and at the hospital. He entered the room to see Lydia standing for the first time since the dance. It was such a good sight, for the first time in what seemed like forever he could stop worrying about one of his friends dying. At least, for now.

"Hey, I'm h-" -appy to see you're alive. He never finished the sentence, because Lydia moved away from the bed and Stiles saw her suitcase, and secondly he saw Derek. "What the hell are you doing here?" He asked angrily.

Derek glared at him briefly before grasping Lydia's wrist. "I need your help," he growled at her quietly, sounding like the words cost him just to verbalise them. Derek Hale hated to admit that he needed anyone, let alone a teenage human girl. That was of course if Lydia was even human any more?

"I just want to get out of here," she bit back and tore her arm away from Derek's grip. Stiles frowned, either that meant that Lydia was now a werewolf and as strong as Derek, or that Derek wasn't using his whole strength to control her. Ether way there were questions that Stiles thought he deserved answers to, even if no one else did.

"Do you need a ride?" Stiles asked, interrupting the tense silence that had descended while Lydia zipped her suitcase full of cards and stuffed toys that her parents had brought over. He noted however that they were absent now, when she needed them the most. It seemed to be a pattern in her family.

Finally she looked at him, and he saw how much recent events had affected her. She looked tired, and considering she had just been in a coma it was a hard look to pull off. "Yes. I asked Scott to call you. Bring my bag, won't you?" She announced and walked out of the hospital room without a backward glance. Stiles looked, however, and he saw the angry and frustration on Derek's face. It made him almost as curious as scared. He grabbed her bag and caught up with her.

"So, want to talk about it?" He asked as he got behind the wheel of his Jeep.

Lydia sat there tensely. "Just drive," she said, and of course, he did.