Author's Note:This has probably got to be the longest wait in existence...I AM SO SORRY GUYS. School has been so so hectic and I kept trying to get back to the story but could never find the time to get anything done. I promise I will try my very very best to get you the next chapter here much sooner than I managed to upload this one. I do plan to make it up to you guys, though. Leave me something you would like to see in the future chapters in the reviews and I will try my best to fit some of them in! Please enjoy! Again, thank you for the reviews and alerts. You guys are awesome!

"Alright. Enough, Lydia," Isaac finally snapped and a very small and distant part of Lydia's mind was smug because she had won the bet she'd made with herself.

She had wondered how long it would take for Isaac to put his foot down. It wasn't like Isaac was going to stay passive about her behaviour forever.

He had let her be at first. He would say nothing whenever he stopped by her place to give her the homework she missed when she started to skip class. She had taken to spending most of her days in bed, hiding under her sheets, and after her mom had given up, Isaac had taken over the responsibility of bringing meals up to her room. Sometimes he'd coax her to eat. Most of the time he'd just leave the plate on her bedside table, put her phone in her hand in case she needed something (she never did, but it put Isaac's mind at ease that he would be just a phone call away on the off-chance that she did), and quietly leave the room.

He'd even let her take her pills, but had monitored her use closely. Whenever her arm would reach out, eager to take one pill too many, his werewolf reflexes would kick in and he'd snatch the bottle off her bedside table. She never fought him.

But she never resurfaced either.

"Look at me," she heard Isaac move closer to her bed.

"Go away, Isaac," she mumbled.

"Lydia, get up-"

Her breath caught in her throat.

Lydia, get up!

"You're going to get up and get dressed and then we're going to go and get you something to eat."

Okay, you're going to dance with me.

"I don't care if you don't want to. I don't care if you never want to leave your room. You're going to."

I don't care that you made out with my best friend for some weird power thing -I don't.

"I'm about this close to dragging Stiles' ass down here himself so you two can work out whatever the hell it is that has you like this- and don't tell me it's not about him and don't tell me that you're fine because I know the only reason you're drowning yourself in these pills is because you're not fine."

Lydia had sat up when he'd mentioned brining Stiles here, not sure if he was fibbing or not. He was watching her intently and Lydia could see the confusion behind all the worry in his eyes. She hadn't told him what had happened with Becca and although he had seemed to guess that it had something to do with Stiles, he was more or less in the dark about what had driven her into hiding in her bed.

"I don't know what happened, Lydia. But I do know that you cry yourself to sleep more nights than anyone should." Lydia stared at him in shock, wondering just how many nights he'd stayed with her and about how out of it she must have been if she hadn't even noticed him there during her darkest nights. "That's right, everyone else may think you're just having a bad couple of days but I know Lydia, I know it's so much more than that and I want to help you. Please let me help you. What's going on?"

And I'm also pretty sure I'm the only one who knows just how smart you really are, uh-huh-

She just continued to stare at him, keeping her expression blank. She had underestimated Isaac's perceptiveness. He had lived in an abusive home for years and maybe that was why he could read the fear and utter defeat in her.

-and that once you're done pretending to be a nitwit, you'll eventually go off and write some insane mathematical theorem that wins you the Nobel Prize.

The dark figure had returned. Locked in her car, trying furiously to stop the tears flowing from what Becca had told her, she'd looked up to her rear-view mirror to find the face there. Grinning maliciously, eyes wide and eager- like it was finding some sick sort of pleasure in Lydia's pain.

She noticed that it never seemed to falter at the presence of others, confident because Lydia was the only one who could see it, which left her exposed to it no matter how many people were around to protect her. It had started to lie down on the bed next to her so that Lydia was forced to face it whenever she tried to go to sleep. Turning around never worked. It would just move to stand beside her bed.

It was those nights that the tears would come, fueled by nothing but terror and was probably what left Isaac feeling so helpless as he'd watch her struggle to find peace before she slept. She couldn't deny that Isaac's presence did make her feel safer. Sometimes she'd find herself craving to be held, tucked safely into someone's arms.

Isaac had held her once before. Sometime last week, a nightmare had woken her and the ferociousness of it had sent her spiralling off the bed as she'd tried to take in her surroundings.

Isaac had been panicked when he woke from his spot on the chair by her bed to her screaming, but having no visual of her. She remembered him rushing to her when his eyes fell on her on the floor, swearing when he saw how much of a frightened mess she was. He'd taken her into his arms, shushed her, and when she'd finally managed to close her eyes again, set her back down on the bed.

It was then that she had realized that she was not longing to be held in someone's arms. She just wanted Stiles to hold her.

"Field's Medal," When she finally spoke, she said the two words that she knew would make absolutely no sense to Isaac.

"What?"

What?

"Goodbye, Isaac."

Nobel doesn't have a prize for mathematics. The Field's Medal is the one I'll be winning.

Isaac's eyes narrowed and he gave her once last, intense stare and then left. Lydia watched him go. She had driven him away now too and Lydia didn't regret her actions this time.

Isaac was a good person and he didn't deserve to be dragged into any of this. She would handle it all herself. The pain, the fear, the heartbreak- they were all things that belonged to her alone and she would deal with them on her own.

The glass shattered around Lydia and then fell at her feet. She waited a couple of moments and then, as if on cue, she saw the knob of her locked bedroom door turn futilely and then heard excessive banging as her mom called to her from the other side.

"Lydia-what was that?" she stared at the door. "Are you alright?"

Her mother's knocking on the door is not what draws her eyes there. It is standing there-with its smile and frightening eyes and it is all Lydia can do to keep herself from falling to her knees from the overwhelming terror and helplessness that washes over her.

She'd told herself she would handle it alone. She'd told Isaac she would handle it alone. But standing with her toes curling into the carpet in tension, facing the one thing that she absolutely did not want to handle alone, there is nothing that Lydia wanted more than to give up.

The glass is in her hand before she even realizes she's moved.

Isaac couldn't help but notice the livid look on Stiles' face as he saw the Sheriff's son slam the door of his truck shut after he's parked front of the house. He glanced over his shoulder at Lydia, who he knew was pretending to sleep, and then before shut the window closed and waited for Stiles to make it up the stairs.

When the sounds of his footsteps are heard in her room he noticed how Lydia's eyes opened and then snapped to his questioningly. Isaac leveled her with a grim look. "What? You thought I wouldn't call him?"

She sat up immediately and the anger in her eyes would have concerned him if not for the fact that he could also see her relief. "Isaac-you had no right-"

"To what?" he raised his eyebrows at her. "Help you? Yeah, I think I did actually considering I just had to pull a shard of glass the size of my wallet out of your hand before you hacked your wrist off, Lydia."

She flinched and he immediately regretted his choice of words and tone. Before he could apologize, Stiles pushed the door open and stepped into the room.

The tension in the room was palpable.

Isaac rubbed the nape of his neck, his eyes flickering between Lydia and Stiles. The red-head was staring at Stiles with a steeled look, like she was preparing for a battle. Stiles had his eyes narrowed in a very particular way, an expression that Isaac realized he'd only seen ever directed at Lydia.

It felt like the calm before the storm and Isaac wanted to be out of there before it hit. He was just about to dismiss himself from the room when he noticed Lydia's posture change. Her soldiers slumped and she lay back down against the pillows so that she was facing away from Stiles. He sighed and moved towards the door.

"Fix this," he murmured to Stiles as he passed him.

Fix this.

As if Stiles even knew where to start.

Isaac had left the room and he couldn't blame him. Between his anger and the all too real possibility of Lydia throwing things at him, they weren't exactly in the least volatile of all positions.

"Lydia," he waited and when it was clear she wasn't making any move to acknowledge that he had started their conversation he tried a different approach. "Lydia, you're going to turn around and talk to me or I will leave."

He heard a small laugh, muffled by the pillow, but could hear no humour in it. "I want you to leave."

"You're lying," he wasn't even fazed by what she said. "That's all you've been doing the last couple of weeks, lying to me-that is, when you were even talking to me at all. Look at me."

"I'm not lying. I don't need you. I want you to leave."

His frustration grew when she still would not turn around and face him. "You didn't tell Isaac about what you've been seeing, did you?"

"Why would I?" she asked, her voice emotionless.

"Because maybe then you wouldn't have felt the need to try and do this."

She sat up then and his eyes widened when he noticed how hers were filled with angry tears. "Do what, Stiles? Try and kill myself? You know what, I don't know why I did that. But I'll tell you something, if Isaac had known, it wouldn't have made a difference. And that's your fault."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Stiles clenched his jaw.

"I told you everything, Stiles," And just like that, all his anger disappeared when he heard her voice break. "Everything. And then...then…you weren't there."

Her tears were no longer fueled by anger either and the grief he could see on her face broke his heart. "Lydia," he whispered, moving to sit on the side of the bed. "Lydia, I never left. I was always there."

Stiles didn't know what had made her withdraw from him so completely but the pain in her face made him regret not trying harder to reconnect with her. He very slowly, cautious of the fact that she might not want him touching her right now, reached out with his right hand and gently caught her chin, stroking it with his thumb. She didn't pull away.

In fact he had to hide his surprise when she leaned into him and rested her head against his chest, her hands weakly gripping the loose ends of his shirt on either side. "I wasn't trying to kill myself."

He nodded lightly against the top of her head, figuring it was better to let her finish saying whatever was on her mind. After a pause, she continued. "I don't remember picking up the glass. I was scared. I wanted to…give up. But I didn't. But I know I didn't think of picking up the glass. I wasn't ready to do that. I remember Mom calling for me. I remember Isaac when he took the glass from me. But I don't remember anything between that."

He pondered her words for a moment. It was all too possible that her lapse in memory may have been caused by her own mind trying to bury a traumatizing memory. However, something in the way she spoke, when she said "But I didn't", convinced him otherwise.

"Stiles, I didn't want to take my own life. I don't remember ever coming to that decision."

He sighed and his mouth pressed against her hairline. "I believe you."

She visibly relaxed in his arms and then, "I'm glad Isaac heard the glass break."

"Me too," his insides went cold when he thought of what would have happened had Isaac not reached her in time. "You need to sleep. We'll figure all of this out in the morning." He didn't add that when he said "all of this" he also meant whatever the hell had happened between the two of them.

She looked up at him and he could read the fear in her eyes, as plain as day. He spoke before her mouth had even opened.

"I'll stay."