chapter forty one
"kintsugi"

trigger warning: there will be mentions of suicide in this chapter. if you don't feel comfortable, go ahead and skip the chapter <3

"SON OF A BITCH, ISAAC!"

Lynn wanted to practically throw up on her own mouth as she reached for one of the stained towels hanging up above the toilet, but instead wrapped her dripping fingertips around some suspicious wet spot that she was certain would give her some type of disease. Her naked body was beginning to shiver from the sudden lack of warm water, and she peaked her head around the curtains, making sure it was at least covering every part of her privates.

It took a second, but Isaac seemed to be getting up from his bed and heading in the direction of the bathroom, or at least that was Lynn expected since she could hear his footsteps. Isaac slowly creeped open the door, and she flashed him a desperate expression.

"This towel probably carries at least ten different diseases and I guarantee that at least two of them can kill werewolves," Lynn directed towards the towel she had tossed across the room, letting out a quite amused chuckle, but that seemed to start to fade when she saw the distracted, dazed look covering Isaac's face. "Isaac, you good?"

"You know what was good, Evelynn?" Isaac breathed out, his eyes shifting from staring at the discolored flooring of the bathroom tiles towards Lynn in the shower, and unconsciously she covered more of her trickling wet chest with the shower curtain. "Us. I mean the sex? You don't just feel that way with anyone."

"Isaac," Lynn warned, gulping some anxiety swelling in the back of her throat, and her eyes fell down to the white t-shirt the boy was wearing, and for some reason it was stained under his armpits and around his neck with sweat. "Isaac, what's wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me? The question is, what's wrong with you, Lynn?" Isaac tilted his head off to the side, and she was beginning to wonder what the hell was going on with everyone tonight. "Let's see, the man you cared about more than anyone, died. And that was before you could tell him just how madly in love you are! Am I right? And then you murdered your own sister, god, that one has to sting, doesn't it?"

"How the hell do you know about Lizzy?" Lynn questioned, and she was mentally thanking that she was fresh out of the shower, she wasn't sure how much mascara she could waste from the tears anymore. Then her face twisted to jerk her eyes away from those of Isaac, "You're not real, are you?"

Isaac launched forward to wrap his fingers around Lynn's throat, and instantly she dodged the curtain from covering herself and tried to push the werewolf off her. She didn't understand, if she was merely just losing her wits, how the hell did all this seem so real?

"Stop," Lynn pleaded as she stared deeply into those blue speckles in his eyes, but all she saw was hatred. "Isaac, please."

      Isaac released his tight snake like grip on Lynn as she coughed out suddenly, having an overwhelming feeling to just throw up right then and there. She breathed out rapidly as her eyes started to burn, and she flashed Isaac a betrayed expression.

"You're pathetic," Isaac spat like venom, and Lynn had to brush her wet hair out of her face to shield her eyes from the boys point of view, not having the strength to cry in front of him again. "You're weak, and you're pathetic."

"I'm not weak," Lynn murmured, and she glared in Isaac's direction as a single tear slide down her red stained cheeks. "And you're not real."

Lynn snatched the towel that she had previously refused to wear, wrapping it tightly around her exposed parts. She pushed Isaac away by his chest, and then he just mischievously smirked while folding his arms over his chest.

"C'mon, Lynn, you seriously think you're good for this world?" Lynn jerked her head away from the male werewolf in front of her towards the now opened bathroom door, spying the same Erica from earlier. Lynn shook her head, trying to get the swelling voices in her head to just calm down. "You really think that the world wouldn't be better off without you in it?"

"The people around you get hurt, or killed, because of you," Lynn cupped her hands over her ears as she heard her sisters voice, and she saw the little girl out of the corner of her eyes. "I would end it all, if I was you."

"I agree, may as well get rid of the bomb before it goes off, right?"

No matter the words than fell from any of her friends lips, the familiar deep and husky voice that belonged to Derek always managed to stake a knife straight into Lynn's heart.

"Evelynn, look at me," Derek's upper lips curved into a smirk as he rose his hand, placing a single finger under her chin to force her eyes towards his own. "You're a ticking time bomb, and anyone who gets too close..."

      Derek made an exploding noise through his teeth, and Lynn jerked her chin back away from his grip. It felt wrong, to not feel the usual warmth of Derek's fingertips, or the butterflies in her stomach whenever he touched her.

      Now it was just a coldness.

      Lynn tried to push out all of the thoughts echoing in her skull as all the words seemed to manage cracks in her heart. Another tear slipped down her cheek, but she quickly covered it up by swiping it away before anyone could see.

     "Leave me alone," Lynn mumbled, shaking her head back and forth, and she unconsciously backed herself into a corner. "Nothing you're saying is true."

"C'mon, Lynn, we won't lie, and you shouldn't lie either," Isaac grinned with his tongue tracing the bottom of his teeth, and he let out a dry chuckle. "This is exactly what you think, every day."

As much as Lynn wanted to deny the fact, she knew the fake Isaac wasn't wrong. Not a day went by where she hasn't felt the guilt of seeing Derek carry Erica's lifeless body — where if she had just sucked it up, she could've helped find her. Where Derek collapsed off that floor to take down Ennis so Lynn would be safe. Where Lizzy would've turned fourteen last month, and she could've imagined the bursting with energy party they would've thrown her.

Everything was always her fault.

"Killing myself won't bring you back," Lynn blinked away a few tears as her nostrils flared, glancing in first Lizzy's direction, and then Erica, and then lastly, Derek. "Any of you."

"But won't it justify it?" Erica questioned, pursing out her plump lips, curiously smiling in the werewolf's direction. "How many more people have to get hurt before you get yourself under control?"

"I am in control," Lynn gritted through her teeth, folding her fingers inwards towards her palms, digging her regular human nails deeply into his skin.

"I can't even listen to heartbeats and I know that you're lying, big sis," Lizzy flashed a toothy grin while lifting herself onto the bathroom counter, her frail legs swinging back and forth. "This is the worst you've ever been."

"The worst you've ever felt," Isaac whispered in her ear, and where she used to squirm under his hot breath, it just made cold shivers fly up and down her spine.

"May as well end the pain," Erica shrugged her shoulders simply. "I know I would, you've been handling it for so long and nothings gotten better, and you're trying to hide away from the truth."

"The truth that you deserve to be dead, and you know it."

Lynn's face began to fade away from the twisting with pain, but more of that same numbness she held on the bus ride here. She wanted nothing more to wrap her fingers around every object in this motel room and smash it into a billion bits and pieces.

Evelynn Kennedy's is made up of billion bits and pieces.

———

"NO! I can't find Lynn anywhere!"

Stiles angrily exhaled a breath from his nose as he stopped his mild run — he had checked every damn room in this god forsaken motel, where Lynn couldn't be found in her own room with Isaac, his and Scott's, nor Allison and Lydia.

The group had already dealt with Aiden trying to claw out his own guts, Isaac buried underneath Boyd's bed and who knows how in the hell he had got there, and then Boyd trying to drown himself with a safe in a bathtub.

"Stiles, calm down," Lydia reached forward to place a supportive hand on Stiles' shoulder, but he quickly jerked away from the girl's grip and an almost hurt expression flooded her face.

"It's Evelynn, Lydia, I'm not calming down until I find my best friend before she tries to commit suicide!" Stiles heaved out with heavy breathes, and he swung on his hips, potentially thinking he needed to search all of the rooms once more, but was interrupted when Scott placed two palms on his chest to shake him out of the frightened trace. "What!?"

"Dude, you really need to relax," Scott commanded, his eyes flickering up and down the boy. "We aren't going to find her if we're biting each other's heads off."

The group that consisted of Stiles, Scott, Lydia, Isaac, and Allison were all standing in the middle of the parking lot of the motel. Boyd was sent to be resting, since he had just barely been alive by the time they got him out of the water. They insisted Isaac stay along side the boy, but once finding out that Lynn had yet to be found and rescued from whatever worm was itching in their brains, he couldn't stay back.

"We just need to think, where haven't we looked?" Allison shook her heads brunette strands of hair falling onto her pale face. But then her furrowed eyebrows creased as a soft gasp escaped her lips, and she rose a hand to cover her quivering lips.

"What?" Stiles questioned quickly while following Allison's line of sight, and his own face twisted with fear as he saw the slim outline of Lynn's body, the only problem being, she was on the very edge of the roof — the fifth floor. "Oh my god."

"I'm going to get the last road flare," Scott stated, and right beside him, Allison nodded rapidly as they dashed towards the creaking yellow bus.

The group of teenagers of Isaac, Stiles, and Lydia all scrambled to the nearest set of stairs, surprisingly, Stiles seemed to be lead, even against the race with werewolves.

Lynn was facing the ground, her waves of brunette hair were flying in and around her face due to the ferrous winds of the night. Tears had stained her usually rosy cheeks, and mascara had muddied her eyes waterline.

Once she heard the familiar weight of the footsteps that belonged to her friends, Lynn swung on her heels to no longer be overlooking the edge, and she let out a frightened exhale of breath when she saw the way both Isaac and Stiles were staring at her. They had soft expressions, so gentle that they feared if they ever so slightly twitched, Lynn would be affected.

"Just go," Lynn whimpered while another tear slipped down her cheek, and she could barely even maintain the eye contact with her friends, the people she had cared so much for, but worried they would all suffer the same fate for caring just as much as she did. "Just...Just let me do this, okay?"

"You know we can't let you do that, Lynn," Isaac took a light step forward, but at the same time, Lynn warningly backed up an inch, making just that much closer to the edge. "You can come down, it's okay."

"I-Isaac, I-I," Lynn clenched her her jaw so tightly she wondered if it was possible to crack a tooth, and her eyes flickered to the ground instead of looking at those anxious eyes of Isaac. "I can't."

Stiles switched from staring at Lynn towards Isaac, and the way that the situation only seemed to be deteriorating even further from the way that the two were talking, so he hooked a palm around Isaac's shoulder to pull him from a halt. He furrowed his brunette eyebrows in Stiles' direction, but he only rose his index finger up in a response.

"Lynn, hey, it's me, you know, it's your best friend," Stiles breathed out while taking a hesitant step forward, and Lynn clenched her jaw together as she hit his whitened fist against her temple. "It's Stiles, scrawny little pale ass Stiles, remember?"

      "How do I know if you're real?" Lynn mumbled out with a shaky breath, biting down on her bottom pink lip.

      "You'll have to trust me," Stiles stated firmly, swallowing some nervousness swelling in the back of his throat. "Lynn, you're not thinking straight, okay? There's someone — something, messing around with your head. You don't want to actually do this."

      "Don't I?" Lynn dryly laughed to herself, slowly dropping the eye contact with Stiles as she stared at the concrete. "Don't I deserve to be dead for everyone I've ever hurt? Shouldn't I do this so no one has to be hurt by me again?"

      "Lynn—"

      "—Stiles, I'm broken," sobbed out Lynn, and even though she had been trying so desperately all these years to keep her feelings hidden, no matter what. It was like the cracks in her dam had finally broken altogether, and there was no more hiding it. "I am broken in a million pieces, and not even you can put me back together."

      Lynn then turned back on her heels so that she would be facing the high edge one more time, and she sucked in a deep, wild breath. She rose her arms in the air for more of the traction of the wind, clenching her eyes closed.

      She was okay with this.

      "Wait! Lynn, you're not broken!" Stiles shouted out, racing's a few steps forward just in case Lynn decided to loosen her grip, however, she just curiously glanced over her shoulder towards. "L-Lynn, do you know what kintsugi is?"

      Lynn furrowed her eyebrows in the boys direction, and she would've let out a scoff at the mention of a topic school taught one class if it wasn't such bad timing — obviously.

      "What?" Both Lynn and Isaac said at the same time, and then it was the first time Lydia had moved ever since they got on the rooftop.

      "It's a Japanese practice, where they repair broken pieces of bowls or plates using a golden colored glue to put all of it back together," Lydia explained, the strawberry blonde girl more so just ranting off the definition than anything else.

      "Yes! A-And the philosophy behind it is that the value of an object — of someone,  is not in the beauty of what it was before, but the imperfections," Stiles spoke quickly, but Lynn's chest was still rising and falling with anxiety, sadness, guilt. "Evelynn, what I'm trying to say is. Yes, you may be broken, yes you can be damaged, and yes you can make mistakes. But at the end of the day..."

      There was a pause.

      "You're still beautiful."

      Lynn had allowed another tear to slip down her cheek, and a soft sniffle escaped her nose. Nobody in her entire life had ever said something so sweet, so loving, so beautiful.

      "Because even though you say you're a million little bits and pieces," Stiles continued, taking another few steps during his speech, where now he was only a foot or so away from Lynn standing on the edge. "Even if it takes all of eternity, Evelynn Kennedy, I will glue you back together with the brightest gold in the world."

      Lynn let a little sob rack her body as Stiles finished, raising his hand out for Lynn to take it into her grasp, and she hesitantly switched. She glanced down at the sideway all those yards down the building, and then back to her best friend.

      Maybe life is worth living, not only for Lynn, but for her friends.

      Lynn snaked her fingertips into Stiles', and almost instantly he tugged the brunette girl down from the edge. He immediately snatched Lynn into the tightest of hugs, and she snuggled into the crook of his neck while allowing all the tears and cries to flood her system.

      Eventually, both Isaac and Lydia slipped several steps to partake in the hug — where Isaac swallowed Lynn up with his long arms and Lydia nuzzled up in between Stiles and her.

      Lynn didn't know how long they had stayed like that, but she wasn't surprised one bit that when they had parted — Allison and Scott had managed to find their way into the biggest group hug of the group.

      Everything was going to be okay.

a/n: SORRY FOR THE LONG OVERDUE UPDATE HOLY SHIT — i had writers block because i wasn't sure how to play out lynn's emotions, but i'm happy with this chapter so enjoy <3