i absolutely did not intend for this final part to take so long, but graduating college takes a lot out of you. but thank you for reading this far!

a special thank you to YourArtMatters23 ("it's what got me here") and laurenthehunter! i really do appreciate your reviews.

part iii.

(Two years ago)

It is an unusually peaceful day.

The sun is casting its June warmth over the day's proceedings, there isn't a cloud to be seen in the California blue sky, and Stiles swears he can even hear birds chirping merrily in the distance. Despite all the thoughts to the contrary, this day is finally here. Graduation. A day most think of for celebrations and loved ones.

But what it really consists of is boring speech after boring speech.

Currently, Principal Thomas is addressing their graduating class with the same speech Stiles is almost positive is given every year. Previously, the school district superintendent addressed their graduating clad with the same speech Stiles is almost positive is given every year. Some originality would have been appreciated, but perhaps Stiles shouldn't be so picky.

Scott is two rows in front of him, and Stiles sighs through his nose in the hopes that his friend is able to hear his boredom. There's no visible reaction, but there's a swift kick to his chair from behind—Malia, who he is sure is appreciating this day more than any of them.

And ahead of him on the lifted stage, sitting at rapturous attention to Thomas' words, is Lydia.

She takes a moment to adjust the hem of her gown, and in doing so she notices him watching her. She pulls a face. He just smiles at her.

The four of them being here today at times felt nothing short of a miracle. The rest of the town being here is another matter on its own. They came so close to never seeing this day countless times.

But here they are, together.

Soon, Principal Thomas concludes his remarks. The graduates stand, move their tassels to the left, and toss their caps high into the air.

Maybe this moment is frivolous in comparison to what's out there, what Stiles knows is really out there. But he soaks it in, second by second, because he knows it is never coming again.

-x-

Lydia finds him after, extending out his thrown cap. "Dropped something," she says, her smile shining in her eyes.

Stiles wordlessly takes it from her. Then, he grabs her by her outstretched hand and leads her from the crowd.

He isn't sure where he's taking her, or why he suddenly felt the need to leave at all. But they end up at the opposite end of the football field in the covered pathway leading back to the school. It's quieter here, secluded. He turns to her.

But he doesn't know exactly what to say. The moment is monumental, and he's finding it hard to come up with anything to say to mark it. Here they are, clutching their diploma covers, alive and breathing. Together. The thought makes him laugh to himself, incredulous. Him and her, together.

"What?" Lydia prompts at his staring.

Stiles shakes his head, aware that the idiotic smile has not slipped from his face. "Nothing." He pulls her to him, embracing her. She returns the action, her hands sliding around his waist.

"You're always looking at me like that."

He shrugs before pressing his face into the side of her hair. "What can I say? I'm just so impressed by you." Lydia squirms slightly, his breath tickling the strands by her ear.

"Speaking of being impressed," she says, pulling out of his arms just enough to look him in the eye. "I'm still very proud of you for getting into George Washington."

He feigns offense. "Did you think I wouldn't?"

"Of course not. It's just with the amount of absences we all had it's a miracle we didn't lose credit and get held back."

"Valid point."

"And," she continues, a little more seriously this time. "I know it's something you've wanted. I'm just glad it worked out for you. I'm proud of you."

And she says it so earnestly that, despite already knowing it to be true, he warms under her praise.

"Hey," he takes both of her hands in his, "I'm proud of you. Entering MIT as a junior? Lydia, that's an amazing accomplishment."

Color rises to her cheeks, a grin to her lips.

All of them had reason to celebrate today. For a while this didn't seem like an achievable goal, didn't feel like a fixed point in time they count definitively count on passing. Getting their diplomas didn't seem like a guaranteed milestone they would reach. But here they are, together, safe, alive. All headed out to bigger and greater things.

"I want to come," she says suddenly, a strand of her hair flying into her eyes in a breeze. Stiles sweeps it behind her ear as he listens. "I want to come with you when you leave. Help you unpack, get settled."

"Really?" He says, eyebrows raised. "You want to sit in a car with me for days, driving across the country, getting very little sleep, then getting to D.C. in the middle of their typically stifling summer only to move all of my heavy boxes up probably several flights of stairs and into a cramped little dorm—"

She covers his mouth with her palm, smiling. "Yes, you dope. I want to do all of that with you."

He smiles through her hand, eventually pulling it away from his face. "As long as you won't get sick of me."

"If I haven't by now, I think you're okay."

He goes to say something else, reveling in the warmth that radiates from her presence, but a call from behind them cuts him off.

"Stiles! Lydia!"

The pair turns. Scott, dressed in his own maroon cap and gown, waves from where he, Malia, and their parents have congregated back on the football field. Liam and Hayden are also present, the latter adjusting the former's necktie.

"We're getting pizza!" Malia yells this time, her hands cupped around her mouth. Melissa seems to frown at this as other graduates and their families spare glances in their direction at the scene. "Come on!"

"Come on," Lydia says, slipping an arm around Stiles and leading him back.

He follows her, stepping out from the shelter of the tunnel and back into the sunlight

(Now)

Stiles' head rattles against the window of the subway car, mimicking his internal state perfectly. Stupid, he thinks. If there was any moment earlier in his life that put his reasoning capabilities into question it has most certainly been surpassed this evening.

He's ruined it. Any chance there was of remaining friends with Lydia, with keeping her in his life, is now gone. All because he gave in to a stupid idea that maybe they could have what they used to again after just one night of being together. Great.

He taps his metro card, worn and now completely empty, against his leg as the subway car passes over blocks of houses and apartment buildings on its way east, considering the outcome. At the very least, he supposes he ended the night with something new. He had started the evening with a dying phone, very little money, and no sense of purpose in his future. Now to go with the dead phone and dying purpose, he has an aching sense that he just killed any chance of being with the love of his life.

He hardly registers getting up for his stop, stepping out onto the platform back into the chilly night air. He's too busy trying to remember if there has ever been a time in his life where he has felt as low as he feels now, ever been a time where he has messed up this bad. Nothing is coming to him.

It's when he steps off the last stair from the platform that his phone vibrates from his pocket and pulls him from his trip into self-deprecation. It's Scott, and the familiar name lit on the screen brings Stiles a welcome sense of comfort.

"Scott, hey," he says once the phone is against his ear.

"Stiles!" Scott's usually friendly demeanor rings through the phone as strong as ever. Stiles tries not to hold it against him. "Hey, I just got all of your missed calls, sorry about that."

There is a lot of background noise from Scott's end—a lot of talking, laughter, some street noises. Stiles frowns. "Where are you?"

"Oh, we decided to go out instead."

Stiles, who had been walking down the street, stops in his tracks. "What."

"Yeah," Scott is saying, "we decided to see a show instead, found some cheap balcony seats from a scalper. I forgot to let you know, but we've been out of the apartment all night." "

There is a loud burst of background noise over the line that Stiles hardly has the energy to decipher. He exhales, the breath leaving his defeated frame. "Oh," he says, "Great. Of course."

"You okay?" Scott asks. "I thought you'd be fine, seeing as you had your school thing tonight."

"Yeah, it's just…" he trails, thinking of everything that had happened in the past few hours. He can feel his exhaustion, the fatigue dripping through his body and pooling at his feet. But he couldn't even find the words to explain it if he wanted to. "It's nothing. I'll see you back at Kira's."

Scott says goodbye, and Stiles hangs up the phone. He is alone again.

-x-

Kira's apartment building is thankfully only a short walk from the station. It is a relatively small building in comparison to its neighbors—only three floors in height, tucked in between two larger walk ups. Kira's unit is on the third floor, and with no elevator, Stiles heaves himself up the stairwell one pathetic step at a time.

Would he do this night again, if he could? He wants to say yes, thinking of everything he could have said or could of done to make her stay. But then he pictures her expression as she had turned to face him, her hand on the doorknob of the hotel room, and knows that despite how hard he may wish it he will never get the chance. It doesn't matter anymore. Lydia went back to Boston, and eventually he'll return to D.C., and they won't meet again until Christmas. What he wants to say doesn't matter anymore.

Then he opens the door at the top of the stairs, and there she is.

Lydia Martin, sitting against the radiator outside of Kira's front door with her legs folded beneath her. Lydia Martin, looking uncharacteristically small and lost, hands clasped around a small plastic card.

And Stiles doesn't know what to say.

"I knocked," she just says, not looking up at him. "But no one answered. They must be passed out in there."

Is this real? He figures it must be as he can feel the door to the stairwell digging into his back, having not yet made it past the doorframe since discovering this surprise.

Dazed, he slowly goes to slide down the wall and on to the floor next to her. "What's that?" He asks, watching her fiddling with the plastic card between her fingers.

"A credit card my dad sent me when I left for college. One that has a limit that would definitely allow for a car or bus ticket from New York to Boston." She isn't looking at him.

Stiles says nothing for a moment, letting the implications sink it.

"Well," he says eventually, reaching into his pocket for his keys. "I can almost beat that. It turns out Scott and Kira have been out of the apartment all night. We could have come here at any time."

Lydia laughs shortly, the sound dying the second it leaves her throat.

They sit in the quiet hallway together, her knee leaning against his. Stiles figures he could sit here forever but the small of his back aches, still not forgiving him for what he had put it through back in the train station.

"Come on," he says, slowly getting up to his feet. "Let's go inside. Scott said they would be back soon."

He extends a hand back down for her, which she accepts, hoisting herself off the floor. Stiles wordlessly turns to Kira's front door and unlocks it with the spare key Kira had given him that morning.

For Brooklyn, Stiles supposes that Kira's loft is spacious. For a more moderate housing market, it was hardly anything more than a largish living space and a small, cramped bathroom. The door opened into the small kitchen with island counter seating, which then flowed into the bedroom/living room. Stiles' small bag of belongings currently sat on the small futon. The first thing he does is plug his phone into his charger, already set up at the kitchen counter. Lydia, he notices, slowly enters the space behind him. She stands at the closed front door awkwardly as if waiting for something.

"So," he starts.

"So," she agrees.

Stiles searches the kitchen wordlessly, trying to think of something for his hands to do. "Uh, would you like some water? I think I know where she keeps the glasses."

"There are bottles in the fridge." She points to it, and Stiles offers a smile.

"Right."

When he turns back around from having retrieved two bottles from the fridge, he is temporarily struck by the sight of her—small and unsure at the other side of the small island counter. There is the slightest of moments where he thinks it might be because of him, because of what he did.

"I'm sorry," he says. "For earlier, back at the hotel."

"It's alright," she doesn't meet his eye, instead looking down at the counter in front of her. "At least, It wasn't just you. I was there too."

He doesn't know what to say next, really. Even moments ago, when he tried to imagine what he would say if he could see her one last time he hadn't made it this far. But there isn't a point in dwelling on this subject anymore. He slides a bottle to her.

Something else has been weighing down on them from the very beginning of all of this. From the circumstances of their meeting to where they are now, separated by an island counter and years of history. She still has not raised her eyes from the plastic cupped in her hands.

"So what has all this been about?" He asks her, softly. "Why are you in New York?"

She sighs, a hand coming up to run through her hair. She was quiet for a moment before finally speaking. "For the last year I've been a part of a research group spearheaded by a professor in my department. A big name professor, actually. He's working on a computational biology project. We've been helping him research and put together his work for publication. And I love it. I love what we're doing. I love being a part of it." She paused. Stiles watched her carefully. "There's a math conference tomorrow, at MIT. People from all over the country—from hospitals, research institutions, private funds, you name it— will be there. And I was selected from our research group to present alongside our professor. Out of everyone, I was the one he picked to be the face of our work."

"Lydia," Stiles can't help it—he swells with pride. "That's amazing."

But she shakes her head. "I feel like a fraud, Stiles. I don't know—" she cuts herself off with another sigh, and Stiles is struck with the realization that he's never seen her like this before. He's never seen her unable to get the words out like this. "I don't know if what I'm doing is what I want to do. It's a great project and I know that and I understand the doors it can open for me but I don't know if I deserve to step through them. I don't know if this is what I want, or if this is how I want to get it. I think the work we're doing is amazing, but it hasn't felt the way I thought it would. I don't feel like this, in particular, is my calling. I actually came to the city today to meet with graduate admissions at Columbia because I wanted someone to tell me what else is out there, because I'm worried that I limited myself. I'm twenty years old and graduating from college in three months—am I moving too fast? Do I really know what I want? I wasn't going to go back tonight. I have an email drafted to my professor ready to pull out of the presentation, but I was sitting in a bar tonight and I realized how stupid I was being to throw away what I've been working on for almost two years. But I missed the train, so who knows now. I've fucked it up for myself." She punctuates this with a heavy swig from her bottle, and for a moment Stiles doesn't know what to say.

"I think…" he stops, focused on the stack of coasters on the island in front of him. What does he think? But she beats him to it.

"When you said earlier that you weren't sure if you wanted to be in the FBI program, I…" she trails, and he understands that it doesn't matter what he thinks in this moment. What she is saying to him now is something she hasn't said to anyone. "It just solidifies that idea that…that we have no direction anymore. That what we've been through, all of us, living through what we have—it's never going to be normal for us. You were the surest out of all of us on what your path would be and even you feel it too. We can't be normal. We're never going to have that."

"No, come on," he shakes his head. "You've known what you wanted for years, you told me yourself Sophomore year. You told me you were going to win the Fields Medal, remember?"

"And I told my mom when I was three I was going to be a horse when I grew up. That doesn't mean anything, it doesn't matter."

"Lydia, hey," he has to come around to her side of the island, has to gently turn her face towards him with a finger to get her to look at him. "Listen. You're smart, you are capable of anything—"

Lydia is shaking her head. "It doesn't matter, Stiles. Everyone is smart there. Everyone is capable of great things. I sit in labs with people who've already received grants for independent research while I'm just trying to maintain my usual grade point average. I'm hardly a blip on the radar of this school. But that isn't even the issue. I just don't know if I've wasted my time or not. I don't think I know what I'm doing."

Stiles understands now, watching as her eyes mist and her chin quivers, that she is just as lost and just as afraid as he is. That somewhere within her the immensity of what she is facing is drowning her, just as his own fears are drowning him. He thinks of how it felt for him this morning, to get up and feel his own inadequacy radiating from his core and out through his skin. If any part of her feels as he had then, as he does now, he understands exactly what tonight has all been about. His heart breaks.

"You told me tonight," he starts, slowly, "that if you go after what you want everything will work itself out. I know you believe that, and I know I believe in you. Don't think about what everyone else is doing right now. Just answer this—is this what you want?"

He doesn't realize he is hanging onto whatever her answer might be until he watches her go to say something only to stop herself, once, twice. "Don't think," he says, "just answer."

Something behind her eyes seems to click, and she looks at him in a way that he both recognizes in the pit of his stomach and has never seen before. "I don't know," she says finally. "I don't…"

"Lydia," he says, gently. "It's okay."

"No, no it's not. I don't know, Stiles. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I haven't made any decisions about graduate school and I—I have no idea what I'm going to do. I don't have a plan. I can't see what's going to happen in two months, let alone two years. And I just feel…" she wipes a tear away from her eye, so quickly Stiles almost doesn't register one had fallen at all. "Alone. Completely alone, all the time. And I don't mean to tell you this as if it's your fault, or as if I'm looking for your sympathy or anything because I know I don't deserve it. I'm the one who ended things between us, I'm the one who caused it to be like this. That isn't… I just don't really know what to do anymore, about anything."

And there it is. They have both been dancing around it all night, but she said it. She broke up with him, one year ago, over one of his usual weekend trips to Boston. She broke up with him, and he said nothing as she had turned around and walked away.

It's out there now, in the open.

"When we broke up…" Stiles trails off, unsure of what to even say to finish that thought. What would even explain it? What words could he conjure up to tell her what a mistake it had been? That he shouldn't have let them fall apart so easily. That he should have fought harder for what he thought they had.

"I didn't want to," Lydia says, always aware of when he needed help. "Which sounds meaningless. I know it was my idea, and I know I can't expect that to matter at all, not now, but…" She sighed, recollecting herself. "I didn't want us to grow apart slowly, and I couldn't even figure out what I wanted and I didn't want you to be taken along for the ride. I just… at the time it made sense, but I knew it was wrong when I walked away. I should have turned around, but I didn't."

Stiles shakes his head. "No, Lydia… I should have tried harder, fought harder for us. I'm supposed to know you better than anyone but I couldn't look into it enough to see what was really going on. I should have known you weren't okay. I should have…" he trails again, all the what ifs and should haves hanging in his silence. They wouldn't be enough.

"No, Stiles," she says. "You did exactly what I thought you were going to do. You let me go."

It almost kills him to be reminded of that. That it is because of his own inability to hold on to them that they were here in the first place.

They are still standing just inches apart, the glow from Kira's kitchen lights highlighting the green in Lydia's hazel eyes.

"I didn't want you to go back tonight, I was glad when Thomas couldn't help us." He watches her guarded expression as he speaks. He knows he shouldn't have felt it then, shouldn't even have just admitted it now, but it was true. "I missed you. I still miss you."

Her eyes are misting over again, the rims beginning to prick with redness. "Stiles," she says, just above a whisper. He can feel her voice on his skin.

He is leaning forward before he can talk himself out of it. Don't do this again, a voice is screaming in the back of his mind. Don't do this to yourself. But it was like he is caught in a magnetic pull. He can't pull back. He can see her own eyes, still misty, begin to slip closed—or maybe he is imagining it? It doesn't matter, they're so close, inches away…

But it's the sound of the doorknob rattling that pulls them from each other.

Scott and Kira had been talking as they came into the apartment, thankfully to immediately transfixed with each other to notice how Stiles and Lydia move apart as if the magnetic force had been suddenly reversed.

"Hi, guys." Lydia subtly wipes her cheek with the sleeve of her coat. "It's good to see you."

Scott, recovering from the shock before Kira, crosses the small kitchen in two steps and envelops Lydia in a massive hug. "Lydia! What are you doing here?" Stiles can feel his eyes on him when he asks the question, something Stiles makes sure to avoid.

"Scott!" Lydia matches the tone of their friend perfectly, but ignores his question. "I've missed you."

"I didn't know you were coming to town," says Kira as she pulls Lydia into a hug of her own.

"Oh, it was pretty last minute. It was just a day trip initially, but…"

Stiles jumps in to help. "Lydia missed her train back and we happened to run into each other."

"At the FBI thing?" Scott asks, looking rightfully confused. Stiles looks to Lydia, an old reflex of his.

"Oh no, no," Lydia waves her hand, dismissively. "I had been trying to get a room for the night at the hotel, since I missed my train and there isn't another until the morning, but I didn't realize that I lost my wallet and couldn't even get a room. We ran into each other in the lobby in some weird, freak coincidence."

Kira looks impressed. "Yeah, wow, that is weird. Funny how life works out like that, right?"

Stiles raises his eyebrows. Real funny.

Scott, he can tell, is not entirely satisfied with that explanation. It might have had something to do with his ability to detect lying with his supernatural hearing, but for the sake of Stiles' sanity he pretends that it can't possibility be the explanation. Still, he feels the heat gather at the tip of his ears under her best friend's gaze.

"So do you need to stay here?" Kira asks next, immediately going around to her small linen closet next to the bathroom door. "Because I have extra blankets and pillows and what not. It's no problem. What time did you say your train was tomorrow?"

Lydia seems to be watching Kira's movements intently. "I didn't, but six."

Kira smiles, handing her a pillow and a fleece blanket. "We'll set an alarm."

-x-

When they all begin to settle for bed, Stiles gives Lydia the futon and takes the small space on the floor in between the couch and the TV. It's a small enough sliver of floor that if he extends his right arm fully, his forearm is submerged within the shelves of the entertainment stand. His left, has his hand splayed under the futon. It's admittedly cramped, and for the umpteenth time that night his back ached from being pressed against a hard surface. But he doesn't care.

Scott and Kira were already asleep—he could hear Scott's faint snoring mixed with her steady breathing. What he doesn't hear is any evidence that Lydia was asleep as well.

He thinks about what she told him. How she feels so lost, so confused over who she is and what she is doing. It pains him, almost physically to think that she feels as alone as she said she does—even more so that she had felt as if she couldn't reach out to him about it. It doesn't matter if they weren't together anymore. He will always want to be there for her, to make sure she is alright.

Stiles angles his head towards the futon, where he can faintly make out her raised silhouette. He thinks she could be asleep but it's hard to gauge the evenness of her breathing. His pulse pounds in his ears as he strains to listen.

"Lydia?" he whispers gently.

He hears her shifting, sees the shape of her head turning. "Stiles?" Her response comes so faint he isn't even sure he hears it at first.

"I've always believed in you," he says suddenly, his rasp of a voice breaking the silence. "You know that, right?"

Her arm hangs off the side of the futon. He raises a hand and gently brushes a finger along her wrist. She doesn't jump, doesn't react. She is warm, smooth.

Please know that.

-x-

When they awake, roughly three hours later, the sun has yet to rise.

Scott and Kira come with them to Grand Central, both to say goodbye to Lydia and to help pay their way to the station. (A gesture Lydia fails to talk Scott out of.) The four of them, with the new subway tickets in hand, are the only ones on the first subway into the city.

Stiles spends their short time on the Lexington line sitting side-by-side with Lydia, his leg flush against hers as the train jostles and bumps along the track. They have not spoken much all morning, and the trend continues into their commute. Stiles is afraid if he opens his mouth he will be unable to control what comes out.

There isn't anything he could say that would be enough, that would even be fair.

When they arrive, the sun is beginning to emerge from beneath the horizon.

The main terminal of Grand Central station is as lively as one might expect at 5:53 in the morning. Being a Saturday, there are no whispers of the weekday commuters that began to trickle in shortly. It is quiet, only a few groups of travelers with their accompanying luggage huddling by the information desk. Still the little sound echoed off the walls, off the ceiling, and the space felt full. Though Stiles supposes it wouldn't matter either way.

In a way, despite the thin crowd, it looks the same to him as it had the night before. Except now, everything has changed.

Lydia is listening intently as Scott hands her the new train ticket he just exchanged for her at the counter. She's leaving, Stiles thinks. This is it.

"'Bye Lydia," Scott is now saying, pulling her into a hug. "Let me know when you're coming back to Beacon Hills, I'll drive up to visit you."

"Of course I will," Lydia smiles at him earnestly. She turns to Kira and pulls her into a tight hug.

"It was really good to see you," says Kira. "Even if it was only for a short time."

"I'm sorry I didn't say anything about being in town," Lydia pulls from the hug. "But next time, I promise I will."

"We can have a whole weekend to ourselves," Kira smiles. "No distractions, just hanging out. We can get Malia to come, too."

"I'll hold you to that," Lydia says.

Then, she turns to Stiles.

From the moment he saw her nearly eight hours ago, almost from the very spot they were standing in now, he had been dreading this moment.

"Well," Stiles says finally. "I guess you should go. You don't want to miss your train again."

She looks up at him, hazel eyes peering into his with the warmest sense of a shared history. "No," she agrees, voice quiet. The word nearly gets lost in what little early morning traffic there was in the station, but he hears it all the same.

"Hey," Stiles says, quietly. But he can't think of anything to say that would even remotely comfort her in this moment. There isn't even anything he could think of to save himself. So he pulls her to him, wrapping his arms around her and holding on for dear life.

"Goodbye Stiles," she says into his neck.

He feels a kiss press against his cheekbone as she pulls away, and with a final departing look, Lydia turns and walks down the ramp to the main platform. He watches until her figure disappears from his sight.

A hand comes up to his shoulder from behind—Kira, he discovers when he looks back. She stands with Scott, both looking sympathetic towards him.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

Stiles considers this. "No."

"Want to get breakfast?" Scott offers. "I'll buy. There's that 24-hour place around here somewhere, right? The one we found a while ago?"

He says nothing, and lets his two friends lead him from the station and into the sunlight.

-x-

It is hard for Lydia to recall a time in her life where she had felt more alone, more lost, than she does in this moment.

She had lost a far bit in the past several years—her father, Jackson, Aiden, Allison— but never had she felt so completely defeated as she had two days ago. She used to cling desperately to her own fantasy of what would come next, of a future in which she was safe and secure and thriving. So much so that the second she thought it might not be possible for her, everything fell apart. She had sat in the waiting room of the Columbia admissions department desperate for something to make itself known to her. She didn't care what it was so long as it helped her make sense of what she wanted. Yet the last-minute meeting did nothing for it—just more empty promises and toting of possibilities that didn't feel like they were hers to have.

She lost it. It was gone.

It wasn't until hours later that she realized what she had been hoping for came after all, in the form of a familiar face in the middle of the busiest commuter train station in the country. Stiles gave her the strength she needed to follow through.

Now, her train ride back to Boston is a mix of restless cat naps and staring out the window attempting to pull her anxiety from her system. Unfortunately for her it is very much still present once she steps off the platform at South Station, tying her stomach up in knots as she makes her way back to her small apartment on the perimeter of the MIT campus, dresses, attempts to make herself look as if she had in fact showered sometime in the past twenty-four hours.

She heads to her campus filled with unease.

Her professor is pacing the floor, staring at her watch nervously when Lydia finds her in the crowded foyer of Huntington Hall fifteen minutes after she was supposed to.

"There you are," Professor Glenn says upon seeing her approaching. Lydia can see her research partner, Connor, sigh in relief at her appearance. "Please tell me you're ready to go."

"Yep," she lies.

And then it's time, and she's lead on to the stage and given the slide changer.

She isn't listening to her professor introduce her and the rest of their team, who stood off to the side somewhere behind her in what's supposed to be a show of their academic cooperation, for solidarity in their work. Lydia feels alone.

And then, quite suddenly and quite distinctly, a thought rises to the front her mind.

She can't do this.

Heat is rising to her face quickly. Dread fills her, a sense so strong it nearly takes her breath away. She's making a mistake; she doesn't belong on this stage.

Her professor is looking at her, expectantly.

She can feel her voice catch in her throat, dying. She doesn't have anything to say—the words aren't there. "Um." She blinks. Her stomach is in knots. Her mouth drying. She isn't cut out for this, she had been right all along, perhaps she could take a gap year or five—

There's a squeaking of a chair seat that fills the silence in the auditorium. She looks to the source at the back of the auditorium, expecting to see someone leaving out of the sheer prospect of having to sit through fifteen minutes of her standing up there in silence, but instead, in the terribly dim lighting, the unmistakable form of Stiles Stilinski lowers himself into an empty chair in the back row.

"I've always believed in you."

And then, clarity.

He hadn't given her the strength to return here. That she has always had.

What Stiles had given her was surety. And standing on this stage she is absolutely sure, in this moment, that everything will be okay. One day—maybe tomorrow, maybe next month—she will be okay. And whatever may come from today, if she fails or if she succeeds, one day it will not matter. She has time to decide. Today is just another day.

The cloud of doubt suddenly clears. She knows she can do this.

"Um." She clears her throat, already feeling the smile that is blooming on her face. She has this. "Good afternoon. I'm Lydia Martin. I would like to take a moment before I begin to thank Professor Glenn for all of her guidance and direction, without which none of this would even be possible."

She takes a second to lead the audience in a short round of applause.

She's got this. This is Lydia's to give to them.

-x-

She goes to find Stiles immediately after stepping off stage, weaving her way through the crowds of academics and colleagues as if she is floating. She hardly registers the small smiles being sent her way or the looks of recognition she receives from the people she passes by. It is all fog to her, with Stiles' figure acting as a lighthouse.

And when she reaches him, it is like she is seeing him through the crowds of a train station all over again, the haze of strangers parting for the certainty of his being.

"Hey," he says. Like they had planned to meet here.

"What are you doing here?" Lydia' face is hurting from the smile she is (so poorly) suppressing.

"I made it about two blocks down the street before I realized I couldn't just let you leave again," he says. "I jumped on the next train I could—Scott offered to pay, you know how he is—but, uh, here I am."

Here you are.

"Thanks for coming," she can only say.

"Yeah, well," he shrugs, "it was worth it. I mean I'm not entirely sure I could repeat back to you what you said, but you did a great job. I could tell that you like doing this—that came across clearly. I know you probably still have your reservations about what you're doing, but I think you'll be fine."

She watches him as he speaks, noting the specks of gold in his irises and the smattering of moles across his jaw, his brow. She soaks up every detail like she is seeing him for the first time. "I know," she says.

She can see him smile. "Good."

"And what about you?" She takes a half step forward. "What will you do?"

"About the career seminar?"

She nods, and Stiles exhales.

"I'm sure there will be another one."

"Stiles," she says. He looks at her. "I've always believed in you. You know that, right?"

He smiles at his own words.

"I do," she says, "I have."

He leans forward until his forehead touches against hers. She can feel his breath on her face now.

"I think we're going to be okay," he says.

"I know."

A part of her is anticipating his confusion at her sentiment. But when it doesn't come, when he instead meets her gaze head on, their proximity dizzying, she realizes he might have known all along what she is just figuring out now.

She leans forward, closing the gap between them and pressing her lips to his. He feels like home.