"You look really beautiful today," He compliments blithely from his spot behind her where he lays on her bed, flipping through one of her science journals. "I love the necklace, it matches your scars."

She flinches imperceptibly, all but flinging the necklace from her neck, even as her eyes avoid his own not there, not there, not really there ones.

He hasn't left, not since she 'woke up' in the Hale house surrounded by ash and death and memories of burning family. Sometimes he's himself, old and charred and smirking and other times – other times he's young and beautiful and playing with tiny blue flowers that keep appearing no matter how many times she throws them away. Young and beautiful and looking at her like he's just any other guy with a pathological attraction to cute but narcissistic girls.

Though, she supposes that's himself too.

But she likes the older version of him best, because it doesn't remind her so much of the could-have been's and if-only's like looking at him does when he's young and pretty and doesn't put up with her bullshit.

Because she wanted him, wanted a boy to love her like Scott loves Allison,

("What do you mean? You've had boyfriends." Allison looked disbelieving.

"Not like that," she'd replied, struggling not to cry.)

and she thought he wanted her too, wanted her like Jackson didn't anymore.

She'd panicked when their date was set because she hasn't kissed anybody since Jackson, hadn't even thought about it and she couldn't even find his flower, she'd looked everywhere for it, tearing through her room because this was her chance, this was going to be amazing.

So she'd gone to pieces during the hours between setting a time for their date and getting home, trying to figure out where she's put that stupid flower, even though she was never the type of girl to panic over trying to impress somebody else (she always is though, isn't she? she's the girl who won't ever stop trying to impress, not since her daddy and mother started viewing her as collateral damage in the war that is their marriage), she kind of ended up doing exactly that for him and it ended happily . . . for about a second.

Then everything turned into Welcome To Your Life, Lydia, version: The Truth and her heart stopped and at least you're not crazy, he'd said. Like it would help.

And now he gives her those flowers all the freaking time and she can't get rid of them even if she wants to.

She wanted him and in a sick fucked-up, never to be spoken aloud ever way, she has him.

Only she doesn't want him like this.

And now she's stuck with him because she's a strong girl he just wants to tear down, wants to use (and its why he wanted her in the first place, right? she's a strong, capable girl, and she hates it now like she never has before).

I want you Lydia, she imagines(?) she can hear. I want you and I've never been the type of guy to sit around and let what I want walk away.

Marco, she whispers to the mirror. Eyes falling shut as she tries not to ruin her recently applied makeup with tears nobody would care about and a certain somebody would mock because she's a strong girl, and tears are useless Lydia,he'd snapped angrily the first and last time he'd caught her crying.

The cheerful reply of "Polo", that comes from her bed, she tries desperately to ignore.

Sometime later she's sitting outside the therapist's office and wondering if this is what Allison felt like. When her aunt died. Her murdering, socio aunt.

Or when Scott and her broke up, as the love she described would lead her to believe. If being without Scott for an hour leaves her feeling so terrible, she wonders if not being with Scott hurts worse than a loved one dying and turning out to be a killer.

When he was suddenly gone after being there for so long. When he was suddenly gone when they'd really only just started being.

Still, she thinks. When do I get to be the one with the boy?

He chose her and now he's actually here, he's everywhere and she's crying more than she has in a while (crying more than she has since that boy stood her up for her first Prom and she decided to never, ever cry like this again and so became Lydia Martin, HBIC instead of Lydia Martin, geek) because since it hit her (he's not real, he's real, he shouldn't be here) the feeling hasn't left and she thinks she might even be able to feel him, his life, inside her.

He feels a little cold and empty, and she doesn't understand how he could when he's so full of rage and desire to kill and get revenge for things he shows her, for burning and death and he had a wife and a kid.

He feels like that night when she thought she was going to die, when all that ran through her mind was Molotov cocktails and getting away and I wonder if my parents would even notice.

He feels, he feels, her could-have-been boyfriend feels like –

he's dead

he's not

and oh my god, Lydia you shouldn't be able to see him.

– something too big for her to even begin to think about understanding.

Lydia.

Lydia.

Help me, Lydia.

EMPLEHYDOBEMOS

"Lydia?"

Lydia snaps her attention away from yet another flashcard depicting blood and gore and screaming and Peter fucking Hale, both pretty and charred, ("It's a butterfly." She hums disinterestedly when the French-Canadian teacher asks what she sees like suddenly she'll see a different kind of Ecdysozoa and they'll reach a breakthrough of epic proportions, here, in this tiny office with its 'It Gets Better' and 'Remember: Depression Kills' posters).

She smiles winningly back at the therapist, wonders when she'd moved from outside the office to inside the office, waves away some concerns and questions credentials. She's gone within ten minutes.

She's late to class but she has a note and she's top of the class anyway so it doesn't matter too much. She slides into the seat next to Allison, knows it's only left open because she and Scott are incognito at the moment, but will take what she can get anyway because she's still Lydia Martin and she always takes what she can get, though that used to be something along the lines of everything and is now more in the nothing region.

They're watching a video and Lydia is busy staring in her pocket mirror avidly and she knows next to her Allison is smiling fondly because Lydia is normal like this, this is sane and healthy and nothing is wrong with her best friend when she's busy checking herself out.

Only, that's not actually what I'm doing, she wants to scream. God, Allison, why can't you see him?

He's next to her, in a seat he must have pulled up because they're two-person desks and oh god, is there actually an empty seat there or is she imagining the seat too?

The thing they don't understand, the thing she can't make them understand is this; he's in her.

And she needs to get him out.

SOMEBODYHELPME

"You know," He muses, "They're not really you're friends. They'd talk to you if they were. Tell you all about little McCall's monthly book club and what the Argents really do for fun." His gaze sweeps around the room and her own moves away from her reflection to look at him, him with the blue, blue eyes and the perfectly non-burnt body. Him who would have complemented her appearance wonderfully, though not as perfectly as Jackson had and she stops herself right there because she shouldn't be thinking of Jackson.

And especially not of colour co-ordinating a dead guy to her wardrobe or vice versa.

"I'm a better friend," He states and she snorts out a laugh before she can stop it, raises an eyebrow at Allison when the other girl looks at her quizzically, shrugs nonchalantly because there's nothing to see here.

She's just losing her mind.

He's grinning at her, looking so proud of himself and for a second she lets herself believe she's just another girl with a boy trying to impress her. Only, suddenly he's old and charred again and telling her she's so smart, she'll figure it all out soon enough.

"Nobody else can help me like you can."

And oh god, if that doesn't just break her heart.