Unspoken - Book 3 - S.S.

Extra: Everyone mourns differently - Part 1

A/N: So, because I can't seem to let go of Stiana, I decided to give you guys another extra chapter! Yay! Just like the other one, this one will be a two-parters and it'll touch a little deeper on Stiles and Lydia's connection after Diana's death, something that I wanted to write about for a while now but never found the right moment, so, here it is! As always, I hope you like it and let me know your thoughts! Comments and votes are always appreciated!

Everyone mourns differently.

Stiles knew it, he had seen it before. When his mother died, he remembered wondering, for a while, if his father had even cried over it. Of course, logically, Stiles knew he had and he knew his dad missed his wife terribly, but it was kind of odd to him - especially as a ten-year-old boy - to not see his dad cry over Claudia's death. Now, as a seventeen-year-old, Stiles understood why he did it. He understood why his dad, back then, had thought he had to hide his own emotions over his loss to focus solely on Stiles' instead - he still didn't agree to it, but he understood now. Back then, when Claudia had died and then again at her funeral and then again during the many, many sleepless nights Stiles had had after she left, Stiles had cried. In fact, he had cried and screamed and thrown things around. He had had bad nightmares that transformed the few good memories he still had with Claudia in bad ones and replayed in his mind the already bad ones over and over again. Eventually, his nightmares turned into night terrors and his night terrors turned into anxiety and his anxiety turned into constant panic attacks. It had been a rough full-year for Stiles, the one right after his mom's death. Constant attacks and running a full day in only a few hours of sleep every night... Stiles knew it had been hard on him and his dad, but, eventually, he got over it. Not completely, of course, but he started to treat his anxiety, the attacks started to get under control and he managed to sleep seven hours a night again. Of course he still missed his mom - Stiles was pretty sure he'd never not miss her, of course - but, after a while, that pain became a little more manageable and, after that, Stiles hoped he'd never come back to a place so dark as the one he had been after his mom's death.

And, for a while, he hadn't. But then... Then everything changed.

When Diana died, all of those same symptoms he had had after his mother's death came back and, in a way, they all came back stronger. Claudia was sick, after all and, as much as it pained him, Stiles knew there was nothing in the world that he could've done to change the outcome of that situation. With Diana, though... With her, it had been different. She had died in his arms, she had sacrificed herself infront of him and Stiles had been too caught up with his own emotions to see it, to notice her hand on the arrow, to know what she was up to. He always knew what she was thinking - he praised himself in it, how he was always one of the only ones to know, without words, what she was planning -, but the one time he actually needed it... The one time he wanted to know what she was thinking, he couldn't think of anything else except the fact that he was losing the one girl he had ever loved in his life. And all for something that could've been easily avoided. Because, if he had fought harder against the Nogitsune... If he had managed to act on his own impulses instead of his, he would've never hurt Diana the way he did. He would've never hurt her and triggered her powers and transformed her from the sweet, caring girl she was into a lifeless shell of the girl he loved with darkness in her eyes and nothing on the space that once held her heart - the heart that, Stiles knew, beat so strongly for her friends and that, he hoped, beat in tune to his.

But now he'd never know, because Diana was dead and there was nothing he could do about it.

That was what hurt him the most. The fact that, even in this shit-show of a world of supernatural creatures he found himself in, there was absolutely nothing Stiles could do to get Diana back. Nothing he could do to see her smile again or hear her laughing or just have her call out his name again. Nothing he could do except dwell in the memories of her that he had inside of him.