Summary: Lydia is pretty sure she's choking. This is what choking feels like, right? Direct response to 2x11.

Tags: 2x11, Lydia, Lydia/Jackson, Angst, Possible Death

Ships: Lydia/Jackson

Characters: Lydia, Jackson, Danny, Melissa McCall, Sheriff Stilinksi

Notes: This is a direct response to 2x11. Because oh dear god, Lydia.

Please Don't Leave Me

Lydia is pretty sure she's choking. She legitimately can't figure out a way to get air into her lungs. This is what choking feels like, right?

But she just sits there, doesn't make a sound. She doesn't cry. She doesn't scream. She just sits there, holding Jackson's head still, like Scott's Mom told her to. People are screaming all around her. There's a crowd gathered, watching, just watching - not helping. In the back of her brain the thought occurs that she wants them to leave. She wants to make them all leave. They don't deserve to be here, just staring at him, watching him like they are.

And oh, god. He's not moving. Everyone is moving, everything is moving, but not him. No, he's completely still. He's completely still and there's blood. She tries to work out why there's blood (there is so much blood) but it just doesn't add up. What could have happened to him? She fights to remember what happened, fights to remember the past few days but comes up short. She doesn't know.

It vaguely registers with her that an ambulance has been called and she almost breathes again, almost, then something else is happening.

The Sheriff is screaming. It takes Lydia a moment to figure out why, for what, but then she hears it.

"Where is he? Where is my son?" The man is screaming, panicking full on. Stiles is missing. That's what he means, right? Stiles is missing. Where the hell did Stiles go? Did he run off? That's something he'd do, she's sure. He'd run off at a time like this. Not that he'd run off in fear or cowardice, but that there'd be some hugely heroic thing he'd have to go and do and so he'd run off and not tell anyone.

She feels the urge to get up, to walk over to the Sherriff, to even just look at him, but she can't. Her eyes are locked on Jackson and on how he's still not moving, not breathing, not anything. She can't move.

Don't be dead, she thinks to herself, please, don't be dead.

Who dies at the end of a lacrosse game?

She tries, again, to figure out just what the hell is going on. She knows things have been weird with her, things... there are things she doesn't want to think about (because if she just pretends they aren't there like she does with all her other problems then she can get out of bed in the morning) and she knew other people were involved but... not him. Not him. Why did he have to be involved? Why did Jackson have to go and get involved?

But how is he involved? He's not a... he can't be a... she can't bring herself to think the word. She doesn't want to admit that anything like that is real. She's not entirely sure it is. She's still not one hundred percent convinced that the things she's been seeing aren't all in her head.

It doesn't make any sense right now so for the moment, she pushes it aside.

Scott's mom is still talking, still trying, still moving frantically around and around but.. he's still not moving. He's still not breathing.

She doesn't know how long it's been. She can't think of how long someone can survive, survive and not come back damaged, without air, without breathing. She knows it's something she knows, but she can't remember it now. Usually, she's very good with details, very sharp and focused but now? Now she just feels worn at the edges and faded all over like she couldn't quite pull it together if she tried. She'll fake it, of course - she's good at that. She won't let anyone see, she won't let anyone in. She's good at that, too.

She let someone in once.

She told someone things once.

She let someone see past her defenses once.

And now he's dying. Dead. Dying. What's the difference? He'd left her long before that.

He's leaving her in a much more permanent sort of way now. He's leaving everyone now.

"Please," she says softly, "Please don't leave me."

There's no response, of course, because he's all but dead now. Scott's Mom sits back, stares at him. It seems she's given up. Seconds later an ambulance drives up onto the field and two paramedics come racing out.

One of the paramedics pushes Lydia aside and another starts asking Scott's Mom all sorts of questions that Lydia doesn't have the patience or the energy to listen to.

Lydia gets to her feet, backs up. That's when she sees Danny.

Danny is just standing there, like he's completely forgotten how to function. She puts her mask on and walks over to him.

"Danny?" she asks with a sweet lilt to her voice and a tilt of her head. Danny doesn't answer her. He just continues to stand there, staring as the paramedics load Jackson up onto a stretcher and start carrying him the few feet over to the ambulance.

The paramedics don't put Jackson in a body bag, so Lydia thinks that at least that is a good sign. That at least that means he hasn't quite died yet. Not that she's sure at this point that he'll ever be him anymore. It's been a long time. He's been like that a long time now. She doesn't know, or more like doesn't remember, how that all works but she's sure something's wrong and won't be righted. He might not be him anymore.

She thinks, and now she can think a little better, now that he's out of sight, he hasn't really been himself for a while. She hasn't really thought of it much until just now, she's been so busy dealing with her own nightmares, her own horrors, but... he's been off. He's been off for a while.

Lydia looks over as the paramedics jump in the ambulance, the stretcher and Jackson on it safely inside and slam the doors shut with an oddly loud click. Danny grabs for her hand, but she swats him away. She doesn't want to touch anyone, hold hands with anyone right now. She doesn't like to touch people all that often to begin with. Danny grabs her hand again and this time refuses to take no for an answer. She lets him, not because she's giving up, giving in, but because she has more important things to think about.

Like what's been going on with Jackson that got him... well, whatever the hell it is that happened to him in the fifteen seconds the lights went out. She wonders who screamed, she remembers someone screamed. She could swear it was a woman that screamed. But if Jackson was the one that had been attacked, why had a woman been screaming?

She doesn't have time to think through this because right then Danny is saying, "Do you want to go?"

She spins to face him, her hand still resting awkwardly in his cool, slack grip, and says, "Go where?"

Some emotion flickers across Danny's face but Lydia, who usually is all about getting the upper hand and understanding exactly what people are doing, thinking, feeling, doesn't know what it is. "Do you want to go to the hospital?" he asks.

She pauses then, unsure. Eventually she answers, "Yes." Because that's what she should be doing, right? Going to the hospital, pacing the halls, acting like all she is right now is concerned for Jackson, rather than puzzled and confused and trying to figure out just what the hell happened that caused this and who the hell else is involved. As soon as she finds out, and she will find out, she's going to... she's going to... she's not quite sure what she's going to do to them but whatever it is it will be swift and fierce and brutal. She knows that much. She knows that when she finds out who did this to him she will make them pay for it.

It's then that she notices Danny is staring at her and she hates that she hasn't noticed it until now, hates that she doesn't know how long he's been staring at her for.

"Well?" She says, dropping his hand like it's just caught fire. "Are we going or not?" She starts walking off towards the parking lot and doesn't wait for Danny to start following. She hears him running after her a few seconds later but doesn't look back. He catches up with her quickly and doesn't say anything. For a moment, she's glad he's caught up with her because she realizes she doesn't remember what his car looks like. She's sure he has one though - otherwise why would he have offered her a ride? She doesn't have a car herself and besides that she was dropped off. So all in all she doesn't have a way to get to the hospital by herself. So, really, it's good he offered, otherwise she'd have to do something she doesn't like doing and call a cab.

As they reach the parking lot Danny walks ahead of her, towards his car, towards the hospital.

They get there faster than she thinks they should. Not that Danny drives terribly fast, just that it feels like in five seconds flat they go from getting in his car in the school's parking lot to parking in the lot behind the hospital.

They get out, Danny locks his car and neither of them says anything. Neither of them walks inside, either. They just stand there, staring at the hospital and not going inside.

Lydia thinks it's a little like Schrodinger's Cat. If they stay outside they can both pretend that Jackson is still alive, whether he is or he isn't, but if they go inside? Going inside is like opening that box. If they go inside they'll know for sure and in this case there's something comforting in not really knowing for sure. There's something comforting in that right now, right in this second, Jackson is both alive and dead because they don't know either way.

"Well," she says, the word standing in for an entire sentence she can't bring herself to say. Well, let's get this over with. Well, let's go find out if he's gone and left us behind or if he's a vegetable now. Well, let's go find out how screwed up our world is now. Well, let's go see if anyone else bothered to come other than us.

She takes Danny's hand in hers and even though she's not looking at him she can see out of the corner of her eye how confused that makes him. She grips his hand and walks inside, dragging him with her.

They walk inside and for a good few minutes they just stand there, at the back entrance. No one pays them much attention. Lydia wonders why she's even here. She wonders why she even cares. She and Jackson never had the greatest of relationships and then it ended in the same sort of spectacular failure it'd started in. She'd trusted him, let him in, but she wasn't sure she ever saw him, not all of him. And now she might never get the chance. Maybe that's why she's here - because she wants that chance. She doesn't know why, really. He's kind of an ass. No, more like he's the very definition of an ass. Still, she's here anyway. She loves him anyway.

Danny gives her hand a squeeze and this time he leads her forward. They walk around for a while, looking for him, looking for someone they know. They don't find anyone. There's no one lingering in the halls, there's no group of people gathered for the dying (or dead) rich, beautiful, popular, co-captain of the lacrosse team. The boy with the beautiful smile, if only he'd actually smile more often, or at all. The only boy to ever love her. The only boy she'd ever loved. No one seems to care.

After their second tour of the hospital they find Melissa McCall, wearing scrubs and looking frantic, harried even. Lydia looks at the woman, wants to say something, tries to say something but her brain seems to short out and she can't say anything. She's not sure she really wants to know and she can feel herself turning around, moving away when Danny stops her. He squeezes her hand again. She can feel her mask slipping just a little so she looks down at the floor while she tries to get a better grip. Scott's Mom tells them about what's going on, leads them over to a row of chairs in a small room not far off from the ER, where Jackson is. Lydia can't help but think that it's not far from the Morgue, either.

Still, Lydia doesn't cry, even if by this point she's feeling like she wants to. Danny cries. He cries soft, small tears. Lydia thinks crying is gross but Danny manages to look at least a little dignified. He leans on her shoulder and she lets him, but other than that she doesn't touch him and he doesn't touch her.

And so they sit there, they sit there and they wait and they both try very hard not to think about what's going on while at the same time not being able to think about anything else.