Author's note: This was written before Stiles went totally mad and I wept for an entire episode. Aka before 3.18. This is my first fanfiction, but I've been reading for a very long time and am blown away by the talent I've seen on this site. Y'all inspire me! Thanks for reading.

Doomed and Damned

You're the one who always figures it out.

He thinks that she doomed him to chase after her. Too clever, too beautiful, too strong. He would have never used the word doom a year ago. But then he wasn't chasing a girl who had death trailing along behind her, eager to entangle the boy who was so desperate to catch up.

He picks her up from school, he himself too full of a darkness he doesn't understand to attend. She's quiet, too pale for his liking. It's a dark, grey day outside and it makes her hair even brighter in the dull sunlight. She contradicts herself even in looks, and not for the first time he wonders what things would be like between them now if nothing had happened. If Scott was still an asthmatic, if Allison still laughed easily, if if if.

Some things you just can't change.

He thinks they still wouldn't speak. Jackson would still be around, Lydia would be bright and colorful and a secret genius and he would still think that he knew her. But he wouldn't, not really. He would have no idea that she was an expert ice skater, had a strange hole in her heart from her father's absence, and liked to sing Elton John while she painted her toe nails. He thinks that maybe he wouldn't trade the darkness for these things.

He also thinks that now, with everything, that she knows him too. She knows about his mom and his fear of spiders and how a standard knowledge of Star Wars is absolutely essential to him (and really, should be to everyone else). They are close now in a way that he doesn't just think, he knows that he wouldn't trade the darkness for.

Stiles smiles at Lydia tightly, trying not to worry her. But, like everyone else in his life, Lydia is more than a human girl. She smells death the second she gets in the car. It chokes her lungs and makes her wonder "how do you say hello to a dead boy?" So she says nothing at all.

And she knows she told him that he can figure anything out. He was the one who always did. She believes it, she really does. With all she's seen, he's the one she trusts the most. But sometimes, when she reaches out to touch him, she can't feel that boy anymore. The one that called her beautiful and shocked a part of her she thought didn't exist. He's an empty shell now, slowly filling with a darkness that she is damned to bear witness to.

But here's the thing, the whole point of Lydia and Stiles and the whole big shebang happening on a dreary afternoon in Beacon Hills: she reaches across the console and holds his hand. Latches on with all she's got.

She knows he can do this on his own. If anyone can overcome their own mind, do battle with the demons, and shoot her a crooked smile, its Stiles. But she refuses to let him. She is damned and he is doomed and when he curls his fingers around hers, she allows herself to smile.

They are going to figure this out.