Title: That One Word
Fandom: Teen Wolf (MTV)
Character: Lydia Martin
Rating: G
Warning: None (unless you count an attempt to be clever/creative that probably didn't work)
Word Count: 268
Summary: There's one word Lydia can't quite make out, except at some level she already knows it.


Lydia knew she wasn’t awake. She also knew she wasn’t asleep. There was a sticky sort of blankness between her and consciousness that she hadn’t figured out yet how to push through. Wasn’t convinced she wanted to push through. The place her mind had found held no nightmares, and she sensed that the place the voices called her to would be nothing but. So many voices bubbled and filtered through the boundary, sharing only the tone of begging, pleading. The gist of it was this: Come back. She tried. She crowded as closed to the barrier as she dared, fearful of touching it, though she didn’t dare examine why.

When she tried to answer, her words faded the instant they left her lips. Every time she thought herself ready to try again, she opened her mouth to speak silence. Random sentences came back through the dark, twisted and fractured from their travels: mostly promises, sometimes apologies. Except for one word that always came through distorted, like it was spoken through a mile of water, she heard them all and dismissed them for their insincerity. Wait, she thought, trying to catch that one word, to examine it for any clues, sensing its importance. Only she couldn’t, revulsion she couldn’t explain pushing it from her grasp. Leave it be, the primal part of her said, while the logical part struggled to assert its rightful dominance. Fear won, trapped her in that in between place that was safe but not sleep, and warped that word because she knew that when she understood it, she’d have to go through and everything would change.