Lydia

[ooc: Noah Bennet is im_exhibita and is used with permission.]

Don't know much about your life.
Don't know much about your world, but
Don't want to be alone tonight,
On this planet they call earth.

You don't know about my past, and
I don't have a future figured out.
And maybe this is going too fast.
And maybe it's not meant to last

Lydia wasn't sure what to make of the world she'd found herself in. The outside world had changed so much since she'd joined the carnival. With Samuel gone, she could go back, she knew. It was a possibility, at least. They were her family, and had been for near as long as her biological one, and she couldn't go back to that one. Carol had made that very clear in their last conversation. But back there, among them, around every corner, in each tent, in the smell of greasepaint and ink, lingered the ghost of the man who'd ruined everything, including her.

He'd thought she was going to take them from him, but with him gone, she couldn't find the heart in her to lead the family forward into this world. She took Noah Bennet's invitation instead, looking instinctively toward a new protector in an uncertain world, and as the days stretched into weeks, still she stayed, finding comfort in the steady presence of the man who'd mere name had once terrified her far more than a serial killer's could.

He was a mystery, and one she wanted to solve, though he shied a little from her touches, years of training and paranoia not leaving him very open to the brush of her hand and the intrusion of her gift. So, she tried to figure him out the conventional way, with questions over cereal, and deeper conversations as the nights grew longer, curled up on his sofa, her bare feet tucked under her skirts to fend off the cold of the New York winter, and still he eluded her with half answers and careful evasions.

She figured she couldn't be upset. When he turned the tables, she played the same game, skimming over the shadows of her past with half-truths and blatant lies, crafting a childhood out of figments of imagination and stories culled from others around campfires that once lit the night in a place she'd called home. But it annoyed her, all the same, as her curiosity became an ache to know him, to crack that unflappable facade and peer beneath.

I just want to start again,
Maybe you could show me how to try,
Maybe you could take me in,
Somewhere underneath your skin?

And I had my heart beaten down,
But I always come back for more, yeah.
There's nothing like love to pull you up,
When you're lying down on the floor there.

When she settled on his lap, she thought he'd rebuff her, push her aside however gently. He considered it, she knew, felt the urge rise up in him to compete with the other, more primal one. The woman he'd brought with him to the carnival had faded from his life, though, and it had been as long for him as it was her. In the meeting of their lips, the brush of tongues, she found some of her answers, and for a few moments she indulged her curiosity without shame, learning him as he surrendered, as men eventually all did, and let his hands learn her.

Somewhere between the sofa and the bed, though, questions about his past, his motives, his heart, his mind, faded away. It seemed she'd been cold for months, caught in the web of a betrayal, pierced by a kiss that had been nothing like what she craved, but killed more in her than any bullet could have. Noah's touches found those frozen places, and Lydia shivered, near pain slipping through her as his emotions slid into her as thoroughly as his body did, and forced her to feel her own, reawakening more than just desire.

She cried in his arms, after, the first tears she'd let herself shed since that day, and when the tears ran out, he was still there, still holding her, and she remembered what it meant to have hope.

What do you say to taking chances,
What do you say to jumping off the edge?
Never knowing if there's solid ground below
Or hand to hold, or hell to pay,
What do you say,
What do you say?