Seeking Spring

Chapter 1 | Pale.

The grass still is pale.

My head ached in a slow peeling way. This line: the grass still is pale, was a repetitive thump that struck, not really the nerves that lined my temples, more of intwined with the thump of my heart. It burned like Hell; it hurt to the extent that if I had a choice to let my pulse go blank, just enough to hear those words go silent, I'd take it.

My heart pounded against my chest, now nearly tearing and shredding through the skin on my chest. I itched to peel at it, to pick at my veins that seemed to be bursting. A familiar feeling now bled through the stream that fled to my brain; my mind grasping onto any insanity left in my bloodstream. That feeling. The feeling of cold, rigid, glass stabbing at my arteries. That feeling. The feeling of being completely torn apart from the inside, threatening to peel off its outer shedding of what I tried my hardest to pass off, as sanity. That feeling of dying, and being overly alive, all at once. The grass is still pale. It whispered. Still pale.

Scott tapped the eraser of his pencil on the surface of his desk. The shedding of the fragments left on the end of his pencil, becoming more interesting than the assignment in front of him. Instinctively, his eyes slowly rolled over to his friend, who sat just a row over and a seat up, Stiles.

Stiles elbow was rested on his desk his hand woven into his hair, knuckles bent to a white tip, as if he were trying to claw into his skull. Scott's eyebrows tugged inward, he was already near to getting out of his seat; ready for any sort of sign that Stiles needed out of there. His eyes shifted downward to his friends legs, another sign if he were about to have one of his "panic attacks". And there it was. Stiles leg moved in a spastic manner, jolting up and down, the back of his heel thumping the ground as the front of his foot remained firm. His heart sounded as if it were breaking through his chest, Scott raised slightly from his seat, scanning for a third sign, a sudden shudder of his body, a unintentional head movement...

Just as Stiles heart rose to a threatening rise, it dropped almost as sudden; like nothing even happened. Scott's eyes scattered around, his friend's leg stopped shaking, his hand no longer clawing into his head, yet now lightly clasped around the back of his neck rubbing over his skin, without the slightest shake or tense. Scott listened into Stiles heartbeat, it was still and easy, like nothing had disturbed it.

Confused as to what had just happened, Scott settled back into his seat, his eyes still wandering under alert. By a sense of self consciousness, a different heartbeat intervened with his senses, and he allowed his eyes to follow the sound. And there he saw a girl, sitting directly behind Stiles, right across from Scott. It was a girl he hadn't seen before at this school, ever. Her hands fumbled with each other, her leg moving at the exact same pace and manner, as Stiles' had before. The girl's eyes however, did not show a sign of distress; they were still and locked. Scott traced her stare to a fixed glare on the now steady pulse of Stiles' neck. Scott listened in closer to the girl's heartbeat, and this time, he heard more than just hers, he heard what almost sounded like.... two heartbeats. But they were both hers. Well, not technically. To Scott it almost sounded like two different heartbeats, but they were both coming from her. One pulsed fast, and alert. The other was steady, and almost sedentary.

Scott leaned back, in a deepening sense of dubiety and a scattered mind. What had just happened? Picked at his brain, till he denied the thought all together and pushed it off as if maybe his senses were just on over-alert. However, one thing he couldn't tap away with the back of his pencil, and watch it flake away into the sunlight that tore in through the set of blinds that covered the classroom window; was the girl. The girl he had never seen. But it wasn't necessarily her, that bothered him; it was the movement of her leg that matched his friend's, her fumbling fingers, and even more, those two heartbeats he was sure he had heard. He wasn't sure if he should be worried, considering many of the new people who come into this town are most likely to be killers of some sort, or if his senses were fooling him.
-
The bell sounded through the room, just beside Scott, the girl flinched to the sound, the only time he truly saw a placement of worry in her eyes, however it subsided quickly, and Stiles was nudging him out of his seat moments later.

"You alright dude?" Stiles asked as he adjusted the straps of his backpack on his shoulders, that suddenly ached.

"I should be asking you the same thing." Scott returned, working at the lock on his locker.

Stiles head flinched back then forward, nudging his eyebrows inward, "what do you-what do you mean."

"You were having a panic attack Stiles." Scott said shoving books into his locker, then looking directly at his friend, still confused himself, probably more so than his friend. "At least, you were starting to..." Scott dipped his head back down to his locker.

"I uh-", Stiles leaned against the wall of lockers, looking somewhere for the answer. "Yea I uh-I guess I was having one." His eyebrows were still turned inwards, and Scott lifted his head back towards his friend. "But the it just sort of-"

"Stopped?"

"Yea."

There was a silence, and then another. Finally Scott spoke again, once he had an idea of what exactly to say, or ask, of that matter, "why were you beginning to freak out in the first place? What were you thinking about."

Stiles' head tilted away from Scott. Something was in his eyes that he didn't want his friend seeing, not again at least. He wetted his lower lip and opened it to speak, however nothing but a soft break of his voice let out; and there were no words.

"Listen Stiles, I think I know what you're going to say. But it wasn't your fault dude." Scott leaned against his shoulder to the metal steel of the lockers, his eyes pulling at Stiles, for him to look back at him. But Stiles kept his head turned, only the side of his cheek was visible, and the now light brown was revealed by burrowing memories that clenched at his tears, ones he kept in, ones he wouldn't let anyone see, anymore. "Stiles-"

"How do you know it wasn't my fault." Stiles spoke, a shake cracking through his words. And his head remained turned.

"Stiles, you did your best to save her. You were a hero Stiles, it wasn't your fault she didn't make it..."

You were a hero Stiles. The thought picked at his mind and brought that unsavory itch along to his nerves once more. He's heard that same thing before, said to him. And it wasn't true, not then, and not now.

His head slowly shifted and settled, the side of his face now fully visible, but still not a drop risen on his face. The back of his skull was to the steel locker that was sealed behind him. Lydia's locker. What used to be, Lydia's locker.

"I'm not a hero-" his voice was low to a rasp of past nightmares that were more than real. They shook his voice, and curled his tongue to an unusual sound, that not even he sometimes, could recognize.

"Scott," And with a few more words, "I'm not." he shattered the world around Scott, as if it weren't already, seeing his friend in such a way he couldn't help. Stiles' face was now fully to Scott, and Scott almost wished he hadn't turned to look at him at all. Because what he saw in his friend's eyes, dug into him like his very own claws. There was pain, there was nightmares, anxiety, shattered pieces of whatever was left of a heart there; and worst of all, there was Lydia. Lydia stared right back at him, through his friend's gaze, and it burned somewhere below, and rose somewhere above that he thought he could call his heart. And he couldn't imagine how Stiles felt. His friend's face was a ghost pale, and that's just what he was. A ghost.

Stiles had loved her, for longer than he truly knew what love was. And Stiles was the only one, who wasn't there when she released her final breath. This is what Scott saw in Stiles' eyes; Lydia and her final breath, hushing away the last of his friend. The last, of who he was.