Notes: So I was basically not thrilled with the finale and all of the things it left unexplained or undone. This is my attempt to make it better in some small way.

Spoilers for season 2.

It hits him when he wakes up the next day. It's about one in the afternoon and Stiles wakes up in a panic because that was fucking Peter Hale in that warehouse last night and what the hell?

He scrambles out of bed and grabs his phone. His first thought is to call Scott but if he finds out that Scott knew and didn't tell him he's going to be super-pissed so instead he calls Derek. Derek answers on the third ring.

"Stiles?" he says, sounding…confused? Apprehensive? Tired? Something, whatever, it doesn't matter.

"What the hell is your uncle doing alive?" Stiles yells as quietly as he can, because he actually has no idea whether his father is home.

There's silence on the other end, then a weird sort of huff-sigh-thing before Derek speaks. "It's—"

"Don't bullshit me, Derek," Stiles cuts in. "You have to tell me, okay? What the—what the fuck is he—" The question ends abruptly and Stiles tries to collect himself. His voice had started off angry but he could hear the fear creeping into it and just no.

"Lydia," Derek says, and Stiles's brain tries to shut down and go into overdrive at the same time because that doesn't make— "Peter was…controlling her somehow, I don't…she set everything up. She brought him back."

And just like that, everything clicks, and Stiles feels nauseous. "Oh fuck," he says, numbly, then with more force. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."

"Stiles?"

Stiles hangs up the phone and tosses it on the bed before getting dressed as quickly as he can. He picks up the phone again and rushes downstairs, calling out "I'll be back later!" just in case his dad's home and then flying out the door before he can be stopped by a response.

He's in the car when his phone rings. It's Derek, and Stiles wants to ignore it but if Derek actually thinks something is going on he'll either call Scott or like, track Stiles down or something, so he just answers it. "Everything's fine, Derek," he says. "Well except for the part where your psycho murdering uncle came back from the dead and no one fucking told me but there's no life-or-death emergencies happening right now, so, goodbye."

Derek apparently takes the hint and doesn't call back. Stiles pulls up in Lydia's driveway and races to the door, knocking frantically. He hopes she's home; he probably should have checked first.

But then she's opening the door and giving him one of those guarded, measuring expressions. He can't tell at all how she feels after everything that happened last night. They'll get to that later. Right now—

"Oh my God, I'm sorry," he says, the words spilling out before Lydia even says hello. "I am so sorry. Can we—can we talk?"

A couple more seconds of that measuring look and she steps back to let him in. "Thanks," he says as she closes the door, then silently leads the way to her room.

He's bracing himself not to get too excited about this, but as it turns out the image of Lydia and Jackson hugging each other desperately the night before is a pretty good excitement-deterrent.

Once they're in Lydia's room with the door closed, Stiles tries to collect his thoughts. "Okay, so I'm guessing Jackson has filled you in on the parts you didn't already know?"

There's a short, sharp shake of her head. "Jackson—won't see me, he says…he doesn't want to hurt me."

"Oh," Stiles says, surprised. "That—that actually is probably a good idea. For right now anyway, but uh, really, you can probably help him, he needs—like, something to anchor him. With Scott it was Allison, so if you love him—and more importantly," Stiles adds, trying not to sound bitter or anything, "if he loves you back, then you can help him. With, you know, controlling it."

"'It,'" Lydia says, and Stiles really wishes he could read her expression. "You mean being a werewolf. Because werewolves exist. That's what attacked me, right? A werewolf? And you guys all knew about them and just decided I wasn't worth filling in?"

"I'm sorry," Stiles says, trying to sound like he means it because oh God, does he mean it. For so many reasons. "We were—we were trying to protect you. Protect everyone. Obviously that didn't turn out so well. But that's why I'm here, to apologize, and to tell you everything. If you want to know."

Lydia regards him for a moment longer. "Do you want something to drink?"

Stiles blinks at her. "Huh?"

She sighs, exasperated. "You're a guest in my home and this is probably going to take a while so I'm offering you a drink. Do you want one?"

"Oh, uh, no, I'm fine, thanks," Stiles tells her, surprised again.

Lydia nods. "Okay, then sit," she says, indicating the desk chair. Stiles sits in it while Lydia takes a spot on the bed, crossing her arms. She looks at him expectantly.

Stiles swallows, a little nervous now that it's come down to this. He's never actually had to explain this crap to anyone before. So he starts off with another apology. "I should have listened to you, that night outside the school. I wanted to, I really did, but I had something to take care of, something like, really important, and then I got trapped and—I'm sorry I didn't come back."

"And I'm sure you'll tell me all about that 'really important' thing," she says, her voice completely level, "but you should probably start at the beginning."

"Right," Stiles says, taking a deep breath. "Okay, so do you remember over winter break when those joggers found that body in the woods?"

—

Lydia's crying by the end of it. At some point while Stiles was telling the story Lydia started chiming in with her part—and if that was one of Stiles's goals in coming over here, he is never, ever telling Lydia that—and Stiles realized he'd been wrong before. What had happened to Lydia was a nightmare, too.

He doesn't know how to comfort her. She has her own tissues, this time, and Stiles feels vaguely on the verge of tears himself. This whole thing just sucks, and Lydia had to go through it completely fucking alone.

"I'm sorry," he says, his voice tight and sort of wet-sounding. "I know I keep saying that, but God, we should have talked to you. We thought—we always thought we were doing the right thing, but—fuck." He leans forward, his face in his hands.

"You did protect me though, right?" Lydia says, and what the hell, he's not the one who deserves reassurance here. "When Derek—when they thought—"

She stops, the sentence unfinished, but Stiles knows what she means. He nods without looking up. "Yeah, barely. We couldn't protect anyone else, though. We couldn't stop them. We didn't find out about Matt until too late, and Jackson…" He does look up then. Right at Lydia. "You stopped him, though. And maybe you could have stopped him from the beginning, if we'd just…"

Silence settles over the room as Stiles looks morosely back down at the floor. Finally, Lydia speaks, and Stiles can tell from her voice she's stopped crying. "There's no use dwelling on that. We can't change what's happened." When Stiles glances at her, Lydia is looking at him, her expression resolute. She stands up, throws her tissues away, and brushes her hands together.

"It's over now, right?" she says. "Matt's dead. The kanima is gone. Gerard Argent is gone. We're all alive, and we have to move forward. I'm going to help Jackson figure out how to be a werewolf and you and Scott are going to help me. We're going to adapt and adjust and move on with our lives."

Lydia's making it really hard for Stiles to get over her. He doesn't smile, though. Not yet. "And…what about Peter Hale?"

She turns to him, face sharp, defiant. "I'm not afraid of him. I don't know what he's trying to do, but he's not in my head anymore and I don't have to be afraid. You all killed him once, right? I couldn't fight him in my head but in the real world he's fair game. He said he would leave me alone once I helped him but if he gets out of line—I'm not afraid. I can fight him now. We all can. Right?"

There's the smile. Stiles couldn't stop it if he tried. "Right."

She gives him a small smile of her own, before pointing at the door. "Okay, now get out of my house. I have to go have some words with my best friend."

Stiles laughs in spite of himself and gets up, walking towards the door. He pauses with a hand on the knob and turns back. "I like this better," he says.

"What?" she asks, eyebrow raised.

"This," he says, gesturing between them, like that explains anything. "Sharing information. Being on the same team. Fighting together, having you on my side, on our side, instead of trying to protect you all the time. It's better."

Lydia smirks, but there's something genuine behind it, he's sure. "You should have known it would be."

"I really should've," Stiles agrees with another laugh, before opening the door and heading out. He's feeling—well, way better than he has in a long, long time. He still needs to talk to Scott, they still need to figure out what they're going to do about Peter fucking Hale—and seriously, why does Derek not seem more bothered by this?—but things are looking up.

They have Lydia on their side now, and things are looking up.