"feel like a brand new person
(but you'll make the same old mistakes)
i don't care, i'm in love
(stop before it's too late)"
word count: 5.8k
trigger warning: very brief mention of psychotic depression
Max Pierce had made it through the first twenty-four hours when his withdrawal symptoms were at an all-time worst. His tremors had subsided to a dull shake and he was back to his usual chirpy self, watching re-runs of dance moms on the couch with his aunt.
Jade knew she shouldn't feel bad for leaving; she had left him in more than capable hands and, despite the issues between the family, Melissa had sworn to ring her straight away if anything happened. Working for a couple of hours in the diner with Emery (honestly, it involved more chitchatting than working) had kept her mind off of it.
So, after swinging by both the school and the corner store to pick up some essentials, she had parked her car outside of Eichen House. The only issue was that she hadn't worked up the nerve to get out yet. Taylor Swift's newest album, red, blasted through the radio as she picked up her phone.
THREE MISSED CALLS FROM: DER 💜🫡
TWO UNREAD MESSAGES FROM: DER💜🫡
max rang me, wanted to see how u were holding up. i'm here if u need me. currently still in nevada but if u guys need me i can come back. ps don't delete ru paul's drag race i havent watched it yet x
please message me back cass. i know this is a lot for u but neither of you have to go through it alone. i'm here. please let me know you're okay. whatever has happened since i've been gone isn't gonna make me mad or anything. i'm worried about u bubs. please message me back when u get this. love you, yeah? x
Sighing guiltily and biting down hard on her lip, she refused to cry. This wouldn't be the thing to push her over the edge, not after everything that had occurred the last week or so. Swiping out of the messages, she hit the silent button, not bothering to reply. It hit too close to home. She was still upset with Scott, Melissa and Stiles, Allison was dead, her girlfriend was stuck in Eichen, her brother was recovering from a relapse and she was slowly losing her mind.
Excluding Max, Derek was the only person who even came remotely close to understanding her. When their parents died, he took on the role of an older brother. While it should have driven them further apart, it did the opposite. He would never admit it but the twins were his soft spot. Regardless of whether they were related by blood or not, he saw them as his little siblings. As cheesy as it sounds, they melted the ice around his heart.
Regularly, he drove half an hour out of town in his pyjamas just for ice cream. Max would insist they listened to musicals on the drive and assign a part to each of them, intent that they feel the music and put some soul into it. He begrudgingly sang his heart out (although they swore he enjoyed it). While he cooked dinner, they'd watch reality shows. Derek complained that it was scripted but twenty minutes later, his loud opinions were sparking a debate.
Takeout was usually their go-to on days like that due to their chef abandoning ship. They argued over who ate the last cupcake in the box (spoiler alert; 9 times out of 10, it was Jade) and other evenings they would laugh until they couldn't breathe over those funny X-factor auditions.
Maybe that was why she couldn't answer him. While it sounded morbid, she appreciated people expecting the worst out of her. When she screwed up, it wasn't a shock to anyone.
Her brothers thought she was good and that thought repulsed her. It made her sick to her stomach. Good was a foreign, resentful, sour word that belonged to everyone but her. Maybe when she was a baby who did not yet have a voice to damn herself with, there was a chance it might have been fitting. That child was as close to good as they would get, she thought. As far as she was concerned, seventeen year old Jade didn't deserve that title. She wasn't good.
She supposed she was scared to disappoint them. Everyone else had deemed her as bad from the get-go. It wasn't possible to disappoint people who had not expected anything different to begin with. Max and Derek, on the other hand, saw the good in her.
How did that saying go? When people see good, they expect good. She couldn't live up to that standard, so what was the point in trying? It was easier to ignore it and hope beyond hope that they got the memo that she was bad. That was exactly what she was going to do.
Her phone lit up, screen illuminated with letters that told her Derek was calling again. Pushing ignore, she looped the gift bag through her arms, closing the car door with her foot. An orderly stood by the gates and swiped his fob to let her in, watching flyaway strands of hair get blown into her face as she struggled to get her bags in order.
Nothing had changed inside the reception since their last visit with Dr Valack, and she would even say that it looked ten times more depressing. An orderly who was sitting behind the desk emptied her bags into a tray, sifting through the contents, deeming them safe.
Neither one of them spoke as the orderly led her to a lift, swiping fobs and pressing codes to allow them to Lydia's room. She was being held on a floor with one of the highest levels of security, which was odd if she was in a catatonic state. The people on this floor had violent tendencies or needed constant supervision. If Lydia couldn't move or speak— she was catatonic for christs sake!— why would she be on a level this high?
She made a mental note of that, her attention pulled to something even more concerning. The cell that Dr Valack had previously occupied was empty, the old novels he complained about having to read over and over again laying on the tarmac floor. Lydia being on a high floor was worrying but this?
Dr Valack had been kept in Eichen for decades, quite literally a danger to the public. No matter how much she tried to believe there was a logical explanation to this, there wasn't. He couldn't have been discharged; there would be more chance of Stiles dropping out of school to dedicate his life to priesthood. He wouldn't have been moved, either; they wouldn't relocate him to a new cell after he spent years in that one.
The orderly cleared his throat loudly, irritated by the non-essential detour. From what he could remember of his conversation with Dr Conrad, this witch was a ticking time bomb, waiting and biding her time until one day she would explode.
"Where's Dr Valack?" she asked, miserably failing to mask the curiosity in her voice. The orderly snapped that it was nothing to do with her. She brushed away the urge to throw something at the back of his head, half-afraid that he would march her straight back the way she came.
With one last lingering glance over her shoulder, she left the topic where it was, following after him. It was hard to bite her tongue when the arrogance rolled off of him in waves. Clenching her hands around the gift bags, she focused on the walk to Lydia's cell. Turning the key in the lock, he creaked open the door, quickly making his exit.
Natalie Martin's head snapped up at the noise of the heavy door moving, her weary eyes widening. It took everything in her not to scream out of pure anger but when she took in how exhausted the girl looked, with hollow, empty eyes that mirrored her own, the anger dissipated. Thinning out her lips, she looked back at her daughter, guilt tugging on her heartstrings. She gave Lydia's hand one more squeeze before standing to her feet. "I'm not going to apologise for what I said. But I will say sorry for how I said it," she spat bitterly. "You have 15 minutes."
Jade waited until Natalie was down the corridor and out of sight before flipping her the bird. Deciding not to chance her luck with the mother from hell, she kept the door ajar, sitting on the chair at the bedside. "Hi honey," she whispered, brushing Lydia's hair out of her face, the soft pad of her thumb gently rubbing up and down her cheek. "I missed you."
Lydia stared blankly at the ceiling, hands kept at her side. She gave no indication, no hint whatsoever that she was able to hear Jade talking. It felt bizarre that the buzzing of a lamp was the only reply she got. God she would die to hear her complain about the highest price of gas this year or list off stupid facts that, of course, only Lydia Martin would know.
Jade waited, the delusional part of her expecting her to laugh out a remark about how sappy she had become. "It's okay," she smiled, her other hand reaching out to intertwine their fingers together. "You're there. I know you are."
She worked her way through the bags until they were empty, giving Lydia a speech on what was happening in the outside world since her admission to Eichen.
A bouquet of red roses sat on the windowsill and a pair of slippers peeked out from under the frame of the bed. The school books that Jade had swung by to pick up were stacked in a corner (although, she knew for a fact that Lydia had already finished the whole course for the year). A cherry chapstick and a set of honeysuckle shampoos sat on the bedside table.
"I picked you up this, too," Jade finished, a hand still tightly wrapped around Lydia's while she held up the nightgown she had chosen. "You told me you hated the feeling of the hospital nightgowns and my mom told me the same when she was in a psych ward, so I thought it would be the same in a place like this. I got you this one. It's nice and pink," she folded the silk material over her arm, hanging it on the back of the chair. Could people in a catatonic state see things? She wasn't sure. It didn't take her more time to explain it, anyway. łko
Her heart lurched in her chest now that there were no more distractions to keep her mind occupied.
Lydia was afraid to love Jade in public— Jade, on the other hand, was afraid of loving her anywhere. There was no way she would be able to live with herself if the repercussions of her actions affected Lydia. The banshee was pure. Jade was tainted. Darkness made up every cell in her body (and the memory from last night solidified that belief). She loved her with every inch of her soul.
"I love you, Lydia. Maybe— maybe if you wake up, it could be different. I know you care about what other people think of you, I know that, I do. But I need you to wake up because I honestly don't know what Ill do if you don't. We can go back to being a secret if that's what you want. And if you want to pretend that we're not even friends again, we can do that. I don't care, I just want you to come back. Whether we're friends— or, or girlfriends or enemies or strangers, I don't give a fuck, Lyds. You just have to come back. We all need you. I need you. I love you."
It was hard to see through the tears gathering in her eyes, bottom lip quivering like a child. Her fingertips ran gentle circles over the palm of her ex-girlfriend's hand, taking care to not press or prod in case it hurt her. It was a vulnerable moment, more intimate than any heated skin-to-skin contact could ever be.
"I think that's enough."
Her eyes flared up at the sudden intrusion, her neck twinging with pain from turning so abruptly. Natalie flinched away from her, as though the reminder that she was a supernatural was a slap to the face.
Jade turned her back to the woman, wiping away the tears that had fallen loose. Natalie called out to her again, voice holding more of a warning, taunting her that if she stepped out of line, there would be no more visits. Muttering some choice words under her breath, she didn't feel like risking her already limited visiting privileges (a ban wouldn't have stopped her, though, if she was being a hundred per cent honest).
Begrudgingly rising to her feet, she paused, furrowed brows ironing wrinkles into her forehead. If Lily was here, they would have reprimanded her for not accepting the offer of a wrinkle cream. The quick change in position had put something in perspective, something that was so blatantly out of place that she was unsure how she had missed it beforehand.
Natalie grew more impatient, tapping her foot on the floor, a hand on her hip as she called her name once more. "Just give me one second," Jade knelt at the side of the bed, carefully moving a lock of Lydia's strawberry blonde hair to the side to get a better look at what she had originally thought was a mind trick.
Above her ear was a shaved patch of hair, almost as if she was getting an operation of some kind. Eichen wasn't licensed to perform surgeries— there wasn't a doubt in her mind that this was fucking bad. "What's this? What are they doing?" she barked firmly, facing the woman but keeping her feet planted on the floor.
There was no way in hell she was leaving without an answer. "Look at it!" she hissed, giving enough room for Natalie to see through the gap between her arms. She thought that Lydia's mother was cruel, but the revelation that she had known about this— probably approved of it and all— was appalling. "What are they gonna do, huh, drill a hole in her head?"
Elizabeth had spent a good chunk of Jade and Max's childhood sectioned psychiatric wards or mental health institutions. Psychotic depression had made it hard for her to decipher hallucinations from reality, not to mention that the voices she heard meant she could not be left alone with herself or her kids.
Her stays were typically three months long, but they varied depending on how much of a risk she posed to herself and others.
While the majority of Elizabeth's stays were pleasant enough and she wouldn't have lived without the help she received during those stays, Jade knew what the other fifty percent of those visits could be like— from the Christmases she spent visiting her mother in the waiting room, exchanging gifts with a ghostlike mom who didn't look alive while psychiatrists watched like Elizabeth was some kind of lab rat, to her own stays where nurses sedated her or restrained her for doing something as simple as crying.
In other words, she knew some stays in these kinds of hospitals were beneficial, but it was a shame that the other half of the time, they weren't. Eichen most definitely seemed like the latter over the former. The institution Lydia was staying in wasn't cups of tea or group therapy or colouring books. It was more shock therapy or holes being drilled into patients' heads.
Natalie looked horrified at the idea, pushing herself off the wall to tower over the younger girl. She must have been a very good actress, Jade thought. "It's for ECT. Electroconvulsive therapy. Are you crazy? They shave off portions of the scalp. It's done under general anaesthesia— it's perfectly safe!"
"Oh, shocking someone's brain. God, how silly of me, that makes it so much better," her voice dripped with sarcasm as she threw her hands up in the air. Natalie might have thought that her explanation was enough for her to drop the idea but it simply proved to Jade that she was excusing this 'therapy' that was going to do nothing but harm Lydia further.
"Look at her," Natalie gestured to her daughter, who was still immobile on the bed, eyes staring blankly at the same spot on the ceiling. "She's my daughter. Do you think I'm not doing everything I can to bring her back?"
Jade rose to her feet, letting Lydia's limp hand drop back to her side. The lights flickered, magic starting to fizzle through her fingertips. "I don't, actually, no. I've lived in this world my entire life and you still can not get past your ego to listen to any of us! You have not got a clue what happens— what's gonna happen if you keep her in this asylum. They collect creatures like her as if we're rare fucking moshi monsters, for god's sake!"
"They're going to kill her but you're in denial—" she jabbed a finger in her direction, wisps of magic flying from the palms of her hands.
"You keep saying that Lydia's all you're thinking of but you're lying. I bet you're hoping if she gets this ECT therapy, it'll snap her out of this 'phase' and she will like boys again. It doesn't work like that, christ almighty! You don't care about her, that's one of the many things you and I don't have in common. I'd keep her safe by any means necessary but you just want her to be quiet and fit into the idea of how she should be, not how she is. I don't wanna change her because I love her just the way she is. And I'm telling you now, you keeping her here is a death wish and, so help me god, I'll get her out of here if it's the last thing I do."
"Is everything all right in here?"
Jade couldn't tell if Natalie looked more like she had been slapped across the face or if she had swallowed a particularly bitter lemon. The witch's chest heaved, trying to catch her breath from the lashing out.
Natalie broke first, heat having rushed to her face as she turned to face the door. "It's fine. Our guests just leaving," she strained out with a rigid tone, a tight-lipped smile shot at Nurse Cross who eyed the pair suspiciously. "She won't be visiting again," her smile dropped, Jade's icy stare splitting through her. Put it this way, if looks could kill, Natalie Martin would be well and truly dead and buried.
"Do you want me to call security, Ms Martin?" Nurse Cross asked, glaring daggers at Jade. Every member of staff in Eichen knew about her— Elizabeth Pierces daughter, sister of the famous seer, a girl with power that could kill anyone who got in her way. Dr Fenris had warned them to be careful; the mountain ash in the walls of the building would stop her from totally burning the place down, but she could still cause a significant amount of damage.
"I'm leaving," Jade muttered, rolling her eyes to the heavens. If she didn't go right this second, she would rip Natalie's head off with her bare hands, not a drop of magic needed. "I'll get her out of here," she turned to the woman once more, determination set. She was like a dog with a bone.
Knocking shoulders with the nurse on her way past, there wasn't a doubt about what she had to do. Within the next day or two, Lydia would be out of Eichen house. By any means necessary.
⌜ • ° + ° • ⌝
"What's the problem?" Malia asked impatiently, eyes falling on Braeden, who she knew was starting to get doubtful of their plan.
Lilith perched themselves on top of one of the desks in the animal clinic, trying to solve a rubiks cubs she found in one of Deaton's cupboards. While she knew that Malia had been looking for her mother, it hadn't crossed her mind that she could've helped. That was, until Malia filled her in on every last detail the small-knit group knew so far.
Corrine, the desert wolf, had kidnapped Deaton and was holding him hostage at a (previously) unknown location. Malia had reluctantly accepted Theo's help, where the chimera had taken her to the dread doctor operating theatre during school. She had worn a pair of goggles that honed into frequencies, using the sad memory of her birth mother shooting at the Tate car to gain access to her frequency.
She saw Deaton tied to a chair, trying to tell Corrine that whatever she was trying to accomplish had to be on a full moon. Malia figured out her mother was in Beacon Hills, and with some help from Braeden and her best friend, they had come to the conclusion that she was hiding in Fort Jewett, a storage facility.
"I've never seen this place beyond a few aerial photos and we're basically going in blind. Don't even get me started on them," Braeden punctuated her statement by directing her shotgun at Theo. While Theo simply asked her not to do that, Malia insisted they came on the trip. "They tried to kill Scott. I should kill them."
Lilith's attention was dragged away from the red side of the rubik's cube, a pout pulling on her lips. "Lia, I said I had dibs on killing them!" she gestured toward the chimera, cross-crossing their legs over the top of the wooden countertop. If she was gonna be here (ok that was a lie, because Malia had asked, and who was Lily to say no to her?), there had to be some kind of a reward at the end.
"Not yet, Lils," Malia slid onto the countertop with a sigh, letting Lilith rest their head in her lap. Weaving a lock of red hair around her ring finger, she listened as Braeden made a last-ditch attempt to convince her to tell Scott that Deaton was with Corrine. "We'll tell him when we have Deaton back," she insisted. While she was grateful for Braeden's help, she wouldn't go back on her belief in telling her friend later.
"He won't blame you for the desert wolf taking him."
"He might stop me from killing her," Malia quipped. She loved Scott, don't get her wrong. He was an ideal leader; loyal, and protective. The one thing he didn't have was the same morals as her. That wasn't a bad thing; it was just a difference of opinion. Lilith was like an adorable little lap dog who followed her around but didn't change her opinions just to make other people happy. Still, Lily knew what it was like to have a shit mother, and they wouldn't stop her from killing Corrine.
She refused to risk everything that she and Braeden had worked for over the last few months just because Scott wanted to be the bigger person.
It was her or Corrine— and Malia had a plan of going to college and asking Lilith out. Mother or daughter would be victorious and Malia planned to be the one making it out alive. "Theo's not gonna stop me from killing her. That's the only reason they're here."
"I'm planning to help," Theo spoke up from their spot on the wall, using their foot to propel them forward. Later on down the line, the group technically had no right to be mad— they had said they were planning to help, but they never said who they were planning to help.
"Don't be so confident," Braeden countered, shotgun still held in her hands. She didn't like Theo and there was no effort to hide it. "She's known to carry heavy firepower."
"She doesn't have powers," Lilith stated simply, back to fiddling with the rubik's cube. So far, the yellow and blue sides were finished. She hated rubik's cubes but they were also one stubborn fucker who refused to let a piece of plastic win. Malia looked down at her with a quirked brow, hand pausing from toying with her hair. "It's the only thing that makes sense. There isn't any other reason why she uses a gun," they drug the brunette's hand back to her scalp, shrugging half-heartedly.
Braeden watched the young Argent curiously. She'd spent the last two years— give or take- trying to track down Kate. Fine, the mother and daughter had sharp jawlines and cheekbones that could easily cut their way through glass. One was blonde, the other a redhead, but you would be able to tell they were related if they were walking side by side.
But personality-wise, it was the opposite. They were both calculated in different ways; Kate was planning who she would manipulate next, what the next shock betrayal would be. Lilith, on the other hand, was two steps ahead at all times. Now, whether she realised it or not was a different story altogether.
Braeden had a whole list of things that separated the two. It was nice to see that children weren't always a product of their parents. Sometimes they weren't— like, at all— and that was okay.
"You're right," Braeden admired the observation, a quick nod sent in their direction. "There's a story. I don't know all the details but something happened a long time ago. Somehow, she lost part of that power. She's not as fast or as strong as she used to be. That doesn't mean she can't pull a trigger. Rumour has it, she's a near-perfect shot."
Her words seemed to make the teenagers uneasy, all except Lilith, who was celebrating victory against the rubik's cube with a punch in the air. "Alright, watch our backs, yada yada, can we go now?" she sat up on the countertop, the bones in their back cracking like the spine of a book. Malia grabbed her jacket off the back of a chair, throwing it over her shoulders.
Everyone split their separate ways; Theo was driving in their fancy black car and Braeden left them in the dust of her motorcycle.
Lilith secured her arrows into their bags, not willing to take any risks of them falling out (she didn't know why, considering they went through this process four times a day).
"I'm not wearing that."
"I'll strap it to your head with superglue if I have to," Lilith warned, dismissing Malia's protests. Growing up in France, they learnt that the drivers had serious road rage issues. If you passed someone having quite a particularly bad day, you would be run off the road without a second thought. No matter how good their hair looked, she wouldn't think about getting on that bike without a helmet. Chris was lucky in that aspect of parenting; both she and Allison were good when it came to safety.
Malia maintained the belief that she didn't need help putting on the helmet, but after nearly throwing it at a passing car, Lilith couldn't avoid stepping in. Three quick tugs were all it took for the helmet to be on, Lily being careful not to hurt her ears. She snapped down the visor, stifling a laugh when Malia growled at the odd tinge of yellow.
"I don't like it," Malia huffed, walking like a penguin on ice, hands out by her sides to maintain some kind of balance. Her head felt too big for her body, almost as though she was swaying to the side with every baby step she took. Lily mounted the bike with ease, swinging one leg over. Revving the bike, their hands found home on the handles, instructing her to hop on.
Malia fought the urge to pounce at her, heat forming in the pits of her stomach. Did Lilith always look that kissable? Because right now... they looked a lot more than fucking kissable. She mentally cursed her were-coyote tendency for its impeccable timing. She was on her way to kill Corrine and all she could think about was fucking her (undeniably hot) best friend inside an animal clinic.
Pushing the thoughts away, she clamped her mouth shut, afraid she would say something she was unable to take back. No this conversation— or whatever else it (hopefully) led to— could be had another time.
Struggling her way over to the motorbike, she swung her leg over one side of the vehicle, hand clasping on to Lily's shoulder for stability.
"You might wanna hold onto me."
"I'm not a baby, Lily."
"If you say so."
Lilith slammed on the accelerator, the sound of wind rushing in her ears. Malia flung her arms around the driver's waist with a snarl, holding on tightly. She hid the embarrassment of being too stubborn to listen by resting her chin on the redhead's shoulder.
Swerving around a harsh corner, Lilith tapped their fingernails on the handlebars while the girls waited for the lights to turn green. "You ok back there, Lia?" she shouted over her shoulder, looking in the small mirrors attached to the front of the bike. She grunted in response, still refusing to let go of Lilith's waist. It was safe to say she wouldn't trust anything without a roof in the near future. "We're not far," they shouted over the music blaring from the car beside them, one of their hands quickly squeezing Malia's.
Fort Jewett was on the opposite side of town, but the lack of traffic in the evening cut a good chunk of time out of the journey.
Braeden was already there, looking through a pair of night-vision binoculars, trying to plan out what their next step would be. She paid no mind to the sound of the motorbike engine dying, messing with the lenses to zoom in on certain areas of the army base. "Theres no guards, no lights. It's completely abandoned," she addressed the girls beside her, a door slamming shut as Theo made their appearance.
"That should make it easy for us then, right?" Malia hoped the answer would be yes, but the slight shake of Braeden's head told her that it wasn't going to be a straightforward mission. It was always a risk that the desert wolf knew they were coming, too. Clicking her tongue, she wouldn't be deterred by her accomplice's uncertainty. They had made it this far— there was no way they were backing out now. "I'm not gonna walk away on a maybe."
"And Im not walking in on so much uncertainty," she snapped back, wrapping the binoculars on a string to her neck. Theo unhelpfully pointed out that she had been looking for the desert wolf for months. "Why do you think it's been years? She knows what she's doing."
"She took Scott's boss for a reason. We don't know if she's back because she missed you and is wanting a mother-daughter reunion or if she's planning to put a bullet in your head. We don't know anything."
Malia knew the risks; she had spent hours turning in her bed, weighing up every possible outcome. At the same time, this might be the one chance she ever got to kill her mother. Maybe her emotions were making her decisions hazy. Maybe she was okay with that. As far as she was concerned, Corrine was the reason for her sister and mom's death, not to mention her dads grief. She would be a fool to walk away now. "I have to do this."
She made a beeline for the back door, undeniably a little bit nervous at the prospect of going in alone. It had started to get to her and she was too far into her own head to realise that Lily was beside her, grazing her hand against hers very lightly, testing the waters. Malia raised her head, eyes narrowing as she studied the hunter's face.
That feeling of dread started to creep in, wrapping a hand around Lilith's neck, collarbones cracking with the pressure. God, they were so stupid. What if they had misread the signs? What if she was so desperate for it to work that she started to see things that were not even there? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
This was what they did. Fucking clingy! She always sent messages and phone calls, unable to leave someone alone for two fucking seconds! Kate had been right when she said that they were unlovable. It had been a clearly misread—
Oh.
Malia interlaced their fingers together, trying to say thank you. It really did mean a lot— having someone to support her decision without the fear that it would drive them apart. Her mouth twitched, betraying the facade that she tried to fool everyone with because it was insane for her to like her best friend beyond any kind of platonic way.
Lilith felt the worry fizzle down, breathing out a sigh of relief. Go through the steps. Accept the fact that their emotions told them she was unlovable and too clingy. A feeling is not a fact. Accept the emotion and move on.
Opposite action. The feeling was probably anger and worthlessness. The action would be to lash out, enter self-destruct mode. When they were back home, she could have a bath and listen to the newest episode of Unsolved Mysteries (and leave Max a chain of texts on how the existence of aliens could be real). At this moment, she could distract herself by thinking about the mission ahead.
If it was Ethan, Chris, Jade, Max or basically anyone else she was close to, it would've made it a bit easier to explain how she felt without it sounding stupid. It wasn't. It was Malia, the one person she really liked, and they didn't want to scare her off by being overbearing or overemotional or— well, her. She just felt too much sometimes.
Okay. Losing track of the DBT here. Opposite action. Instead of self-destructing, self care. Instead of being mean and lashing out, they would guide herself away from the source of annoyance until later on, it could be dealt with rationally.
Braeden seemed to have caved, as she walked beside the two girls, Theo lagging behind them. Silently, the group made their way to one of the doors at the back and quietly crept inside.
Malia gave a slight nod, confirming that this was the room she had seen with the goggles. She led the way, her hand still connected to Lilith's, not wanting their best friend to get caught in the crossfire if something was to go wrong. Squeezing her eyes shut, she pulled the huntress to a stop, the others falling suit. "Theres something wrong," she frowned.
A/N:
i've missed jydia so freaking much 🫶 there's only so much i can do when she's in eichen but i'm pretty sure she's being broken out next episode!! so that's gonna be VERY dramatic in a very jade style
derek is so cute he loves the twins like siblings and i'm gonna sob, all he wants is for them to be HAPPY :((((
i love lia and lils sm. they're so cute.