Chapter Text
DEREK
It begins, as these things usually do, with a chance encounter.
Derek might refute that later. In the future, when all is said and done, he might look back on this moment with more than just coincidence in his eyes. He might see the every context of who his family is and the tragedy of his first twenty years of life, each confluence of events that brought him to this cemetery, on this day. But, regardless, it doesn’t matter much – the difference between fate and chance. Either way, the ending stays the same. Either way, Derek ends up here.
Derek ends up in this cemetery, on this day. He kneels before a headstone, lets his jeans stain with the melting frost of grass, the cold of the day turning to dew and moisture.
Paige Krasikeva
July 21, 1990 – December 6, 2005
Only love lives longer than us
It’s been five years since Derek took Paige’s life in the root cellar. Since Peter’s manipulation warped in Derek’s mind, sent him rattling into fears that were unfounded, that held no weight in the eyes of Paige, in the heart of his first love. His childhood sweetheart who would never meet the days of adulthood, who would never meet the hollow person kneeling at her grave year after year.
Derek has been told that time is the best remedy, that the sharp pain of grief dulls, loses its burning heat and simmers down to soft embers. He’s been told that it will get easier, said like an inevitability instead of an empty comfort, instead of the hope that belies its truth.
It doesn’t hurt any less, is the thing.
Derek doesn’t come here often, doesn’t visit the biggest regret of his life because it’s hard to look that in the eye. It’s difficult to confront the mistakes he made, the life he took. It’s impossible to come here without feeling fifteen again, without remembering what it was like to be swept up in that fantasy of true love, that all encompassing feeling of being in love for the very first time. It’s a blinding feeling, one that a person will do anything to keep.
And, in Derek’s case, he held on too tight. He smothered the flame until it burned out of existence, until there was nothing left of the girl with the beautiful brown eyes and the lilt of her voice so musical, so magical like her fingers dancing over the strings of her instrument.
The worst part is that Derek will never know.
He’ll never know how things would have ended if he hadn’t destroyed them with his own two hands. He’ll never know if Paige would have stayed by his side forever. He’ll never know if he could have avoided Kate entirely.
Derek will never know.
That’s the curse of life, Derek thinks.
In youth, he was so confident, so brave, so certain. Now, Derek is none of those things. Now, he’s a shell of a person, kneeling at the grave of the girl he killed. Now, Derek can look back, can wonder about every mistake and every misstep. Derek can see them now, the things he would change. And yet, he has no power to do so. And yet, he’s stuck with a life that he feels was ruined by the age of fifteen.
Derek is stuck here. In this cemetery, on this day. Five years later.
He doesn’t speak to Paige. Sometimes he does, when his walls are weaker and the vulnerability pours forth like water breaking through a dam. Sometimes he talks to her, finds apologies and pleading words of forgiveness.
But not today.
Today, Derek sits silent at her grave, lets the hours pass him by in nothing but grief, with nothing to show for it but the subtle ache in his knees that will heal away as soon as he stands, as soon as the pressure eases. Derek sits silent at her grave as the sun dips in the sky, fades behind clouds and brings a winter chill to his skin, marks him with goosebumps and nothing more. Nothing more to prove that Derek has spent an entire day here – alone.
Derek is alone. He’s alone in his thoughts, in his grief, in his pain. He’s alone.
Until he isn’t.
Derek probably wouldn’t have noticed the stranger’s arrival if it weren’t for keen werewolf senses, if it weren’t for the rustling of leaves and the quiet exhales of breath.
Derek has to peel his eyes away from the tombstone. It’s a movement of force, a movement made in discomfort and in loss. Derek tears himself away, out of this trance, this haze that could have lasted forever if he let it. Derek looks up, though, follows the noise with eyes sweeping over the cemetery.
They land on a boy.
It should be Derek’s signal to leave. He should press a kiss to the stone, should press up on his knees, should press forward. He should go home, back to his family and the dinner that he knows will be waiting for him by now – either to be shared at the table or gone cold, Derek can’t be sure which it will be, not without a glance at his watch for the time, and, for some reason, Derek refuses to look. For some reason, he doesn’t go, doesn’t leave.
He stays kneeling at the tombstone, watching this boy climb up and into an excavator that he’s too young, too small to be operating. The boy is only an early teenager, and yet he turns the keys with familiarity, starts up the machine’s engine like he’s been doing this his whole life.
The boy isn’t dressed for the weather either. His coat is a thin hoodie, fraying with loose threads that Derek watches ripple in the air as the machine jolts forward, wind sweeping the threads and sweeping through dirty blond curls. As the machine moves and the shadows go with it, Derek notices a dark bruise under his left eye. It’s in the phase of brown and purple, a new injury that makes his blue eyes look even brighter, even through the fading light of the cemetery and the distance between them. The boy is…
Derek doesn’t have a word for it, really.
Derek has withdrawn since Paige, since the almost-fire of ‘06. He’s turned inside out, switched his focus from external to internal. He’s become self absorbed, almost, and so this… this is something he shouldn’t notice, doesn’t expect himself to notice. This is something that shouldn’t catch his eye, yet it does. Yet he can’t look away from the boy who jumps when the excavator creaks, who glances over his shoulder every sixty seconds, who has a bruise under his tired blue eyes.
Maybe it’s the anniversary. Maybe it’s the day of the year, but Derek watches the boy for longer than he should. He kneels in front of Paige’s grave well into the evening with a pit in his stomach and a lump in his throat.
—
Talia is waiting on the porch when Derek gets back to the house.
He’s not really all that surprised. Not when his mother has always been overprotective, even before Paige and Kate and the tenuous peace treaty. Talia Hale has always been something of a helicopter parent, has always had care in spades and more love to give than her three children can really swallow, so.
So, Derek is expecting it when she’s waiting for him. He wouldn’t expect any less of her when it’s after dark on December sixth.
“Hey, Mom,” Derek says. He, at least, has the decency to sound a little sheepish, a little cowed, a little guilty.
Talia doesn’t say hello to greet him in response. Instead, for just a moment, she brings her hand up to cradle him, to cup the back of his neck with a gentle squeeze. It’s a quiet show of affection, a soft moment where her brown eyes trace over him, searching for signs of distress and hurt. They must be there, Derek knows. There’s no hiding his pain on a day like today, no masking the ache in his bones, the rising tide of grief lapping at his skin. And yet, Talia doesn’t mention it. She makes no sounds of sympathy or pity, asks no questions of well-being.
Talia drops her hand, gesturing in towards the house with it, and says, “You missed dinner, but there’s leftovers in the fridge. Go heat them up and eat.”
“Okay,” Derek says in return, offers a small nod as he ducks his head and ducks inside. Warmth greets him at once, engulfs his weary limbs and settles deep in his chest, a comfort that can only be found with returning home, with stepping out of the cold and into the embrace of familiarity.
Derek moves past the stairs at the entryway and makes his way to the kitchen, opens the fridge with a soft squeak of the hinges and an illumination of the light inside. Derek finds the tupperware of leftovers, closes his hand around it to find the plastic not fully cold yet, meaning he isn’t that late, meaning he doesn’t bother warming the food in the microwave like Talia told him too. Instead, he grabs a fork from the drawer and eats right out of the container, standing in the kitchen with a numb heart and a loud mind.
It’s a move that would usually get him scolded, usually bring some complaint of gross from one of his sisters, but not today. Today, Cora and Laura are nowhere to be found. Today, when Talia joins him, she doesn’t say a word about it. She leans against the doorway of the kitchen, just standing with him and watching him eat. It’s so he doesn’t have to have his dinner alone. Though some part of Derek wishes she would let him do just that, wishes he didn’t have an audience for the churning of his gut and the difficulty stomaching this meal.
With just the two of them in the kitchen, Derek could mention the boy at the cemetery. He could explain what exactly kept him there so much longer than he would usually be gone for. He could tell her about the concern flaring up inside him, could make clear that it’s not just Paige, that there’s more to the story.
But Derek keeps his mouth occupied with food and doesn’t say a word about it.
It’s Talia who eventually breaks their silence, who says, with a slight wrinkling of her nose, “Take a shower before bed, will you? You smell like grass.”
Derek exhales a breath that could be read as laughter, but is also maybe just relief. Relief that his mom is as gentle as she is, that she doesn’t push him to speak, that she knows he’ll come to her if he wants to talk about this. And, right now, he wants nothing less. And so, he just says, “Sure, Mom.”
Talia reaches out again, hand falling on Derek’s shoulder and petting lightly there, fingers stroking out a nonsense pattern. She embeds the touch with love, paints over Derek with the soothing comfort of a mother, with the soothing warmth of the person that raised Derek from the ground up and pulled him through the worst times of his life.
Talia smiles at him, full of warmth. And then, she relinquishes her hold and turns to walk away without another word.
Derek stands in the kitchen a little longer, forcing himself to finish the meal provided for him even as his stomach protests.
—
Derek takes a lap around the house before retreating to his bedroom for the night. He walks down the hallway from the kitchen, almost stops to knock on Laura’s closed bedroom door, but keeps going. He follows sounds of movement, quiet grunts that can only mean one thing, and stops outside the open door of the training room. He leans in the doorway just as his mother had before, watches as Cora slams hit after hit into the punching bag, metal chains straining with the force and rattling with the back and forth momentum.
“Jesus,” Derek says. “Who pissed you off?”
Cora doesn’t flinch at his words, doesn’t startle at his appearance. She doesn’t even look over her shoulder, must have heard him coming – or, perhaps, smelled the grass that Talia had complained of. Either way, Cora keeps punching, keeps training. She only quips back with a quick and slightly breathless, “You’re starting to.”
Derek scoffs quietly, rolls his eyes at his younger sister, at the moodiness of a teenager and the kind of grumpiness that seems to be perpetually radiating off of her. He pushes up from the doorway, stands fully and steps further into the room. Maybe just to piss her off a little more, or maybe to actually observe her technique, to watch the way she pounds against the punching bag.
“Slow down,” Derek tells her. “Punching as hard and as fast as you can isn’t going to help you with precision.”
Cora slows on instinct, bouncing a little further back, increasing the distance between her and the punching back so she can finally turn to look at Derek. There’s sweat along her forehead and a crease between her brows, eyes narrowed like daggers as she says, “Maybe not, but it’s effective.”
“Is it?” Derek asks her, head tilting to one side. “Brute strength isn’t everything.”
“You sound like Laura,” Cora complains, spitting their older sister’s name like it’s an insult instead of the compliment Derek takes it as. He half expects Laura to call out with an offended heard that, half expects her to show up and kick both of their asses just to prove that she can. But the door to Laura’s room stays closed and the house stays quiet apart from the swinging of the punching bag and Cora and Derek’s voices. (There’s a small shred of disappointment in that. It might’ve helped Derek get his head on straight, the physical contact and singular focus of a fight, but… oh well.)
“Well, Laura’s usually right, isn’t she?”
Cora stops moving altogether then, turns to face Derek fully, to meet his eyes with a somehow sharper glare than before. Derek just looks back at her, gives nothing in his expression and nothing in his stance, just lets her posture for a moment, lets her breath even out as the exertion of exercise fades.
Then, Cora sighs loudly. She breaks eye contact first, looking down at her hands to unwrap and rewrap her knuckles. They don’t need the protection, really. Any injuries sustained in training heal over quickly, but Talia insists that they need to conserve that energy, that healing takes something from them so they must learn to fight without hurting themselves in the process. (Of the three of them, Derek’s the worst at adhering to the sentiment.)
“Did you need something?” Cora asks him, flicking her eyes up to his as she wraps her left hand without looking, with practiced routine and learned skill. “Or are you just here to annoy me?”
Derek shrugs one shoulder, and, because it’s so easy to push her buttons, says, “To annoy you.”
Cora rolls her eyes with impressive irritation. For a moment, Derek thinks she’s going to stomp across the room and push him out. She usually would, but, today, she just turns her back on him and returns to training. Derek’s not sure if it’s a coincidence or a kindness because she knows what day it is too, even if she was only eleven and sheltered from the whole thing when it happened.
Derek decides he doesn’t care what causes her pseudo-niceness. He just watches her a moment longer, pleased to see that her punches come at a less rapid and more careful pace.
Then, he leaves her to it, finally retiring to his bedroom.
—
The shower doesn’t help the way Derek thought it would. He hoped that his mother would have some kind of psychic ability, some kind of magical foresight to see that this is exactly what Derek needed. But, apparently, she was genuine in her objective of washing away the scent of grass because, as much as Derek wants it to be a miracle cure, the shower doesn’t fix all his problems.
Derek stands under the too warm spray, washes away the scent of the cemetery, but the grief of it lingers. The pain resting on his shoulders doesn’t swirl down the drain and out of sight. It stays like a leech on his senses, stays latched on and attached. It wraps around him like a straight jacket or a noose, something that could kill him if Derek let it.
But he doesn’t.
He showers routinely, showers without any mindfulness. He goes through the tasks in a daze of repetition and learned behaviors. He focuses only on keeping his feet steady on the ground and his eyes out of the spray of water. He focuses only on going through the motions.
His brain clouds with thoughts of loss and despair, but Derek doesn’t let it take over completely. He lets the ache reside at the back of his mind, lets it set up camp in his peripheral vision. He lets it linger because no amount of soap, no amount of scrubbing, no amount of too warm water is ever going to clean him of his sins.
Derek showers, rinses the scent of grass from his skin, but he doesn’t purify. He stays the same muddied version of himself, stays the same broken pieces of the person Paige knew, stays a ghost of the person Paige once loved, stays a version of himself she wouldn’t recognize.
Derek thinks it might be better that way, detached and removed, unlovable by the only girl who has ever truly loved him.
—
Sleep doesn’t come easily to Derek that night. Even after the warm shower and the emotional exhaustion of the day, when he crawls into bed, rest doesn’t come to claim him, doesn’t come to drag him under consciousness and out of wake. Derek, instead, is left feeling restless, left with whirlwind thoughts.
He’s in his bed, he knows. He can feel the comfort of the mattress beneath him, the edges of his blanket tickling under his chin. He knows he’s home, and yet his mind is stuck in the cemetery still. Every time he closes his eyes, he’s greeted with the letters of Paige in carved out script, greeted with the blinking briefness of her life, greeted with words that suit her so well. Every time he closes his eyes, he feels the grass beneath his knees and the cool winter air over his cheeks.
Every time he closes his eyes, Derek sees that kid manning the excavator.
Derek knows nothing about him, and yet he’s convinced that there’s something not right going on there. He has no proof, nothing beyond a bruise under his eye, a bruise that could have many explanations beyond he’s in danger. And yet, Derek can’t see it any other way. And yet, Derek is left with a bitter taste in his mouth, with a twisting of his veins, with a sparkling of his nerve endings.
Derek knows nothing about this boy, about this stranger, and yet he feels almost… responsible.
Derek blames it, mostly, on the day of the year. He blames it on the death of Paige at only fifteen years old, at the fact that this boy can’t be any older than she was. He blames it on the atmosphere of the cemetery as the setting of their chance encounter. Derek blames it on anything other than truth. Because he has no truth. Because he has no evidence, because he has nothing but a gut feeling. Because he can’t do anything to help right now – can’t do anything at all, probably.
Derek tosses and turns for hours, mind ricocheting back and forth, between a tragedy known and a tragedy suspected. Until, eventually, when the sky is too close to softening for his liking, Derek finally falls into an even more restless sleep, a swirling dream of glowing blue eyes and red blood.
—
Derek wakes not long after sunrise.
He groans with it, this soft noise at the base of his throat, this quiet sound of frustration. He doesn’t feel refreshed, rejuvenated, reset. He feels nothing but emptiness, nothing but the gravity of exhaustion pulling him down into the plush of his mattress, burying him under pounds of grief.
Derek could try to slip back into sleep, but he knows himself. He knows he’ll only feel worse if he fails, knows he’ll only feel more out of sorts if he lets this carry on into the proper morning and the early afternoon. And so, despite all instincts to wrap his comforter tighter around his shoulders, Derek forces himself out of bed and his bare feet to the cold wood floor.
Derek is quick about his next few tasks. He’s quick with relieving his bladder, brushing his teeth, trading his shirtless chest for a tank top and sweatpants. He’s quick about shoving his feet into his running shoes, and quiet about easing down the stairs, skipping over the step that he knows creaks loud and annoying.
And, within ten minutes of being conscious, Derek is out of the house and breathing in the crisp air of the winter weather. There’s a cold front coming through the valley as December comes to fruition, as the sun rises at a pace not quick enough for relief, dripping warmth like slow moving honey, painting the sky in pretty colors of orange and yellow. The cold shocks Derek a little, makes the skin of his arm prickle with goosebumps and the hairs there stand up. Derek considers ducking back inside for a jacket or a sweatshirt, but decides it isn’t worth the risk of being stopped by his light sleeping mother or sister.
And so, Derek faces the cold and jogs down the steps and into the preserve.
Running usually helps Derek. It usually clears his head and brings him clarity. It brings with it a sense of freedom, an adrenaline rush at the muscle memories of being chased, of fighting for his life. It’s not the healthiest of coping mechanisms, to remember narrow escapes and fleeting survival, to feel the glee of those moments like a kickstart to his senses, breaking him out of that melancholia and self pity. It’s not the healthiest of tactics, but it’s better than some and it almost always works. It’s effective, to tear through the woods and kick up leaves, to jump over roots and sprint past fluttering wings and quiet chirping. It’s… good.
Usually.
Usually, Derek stays inside the lines of the Hale property, stays inside the boundaries of the preserve. Usually, Derek loops around and runs circles around their perimeter, goes for miles like that. Usually, Derek doesn’t have to think about where it’s safe to run at breakneck speeds and where it isn’t. Usually, Derek’s wolf leads him back to pack and den before he can lose himself in any direction.
Usually.
Today, of course, things go wrong. Today, of course, Derek breaches the property and the woods without even realizing it. Today, of course, Derek ends up on the edge of the cemetery where Paige Krasikeva lies six feet under, buried in a wooden casket, in a dress not stained by her blood.
Derek recognizes the shapes of stone as soon as they come into view, realizes where his instincts, his wolf, his stupid distraction have led him. And, just as quickly as he realizes, Derek screeches to a grinding sort of stop.
It’s not smooth, not with the pace he was sprinting at, but it works nonetheless. Derek nearly slams his forehead into the bark of a tree, but manages to catch his palms on it instead, slides to a halt and ducks behind it without thinking. He catches himself and catches his breath, stands behind the tree, looking out just enough to take in the scene laid out in front of him.
The excavator is still out, still in the middle of the graveyard like the kid has been working all night. The kid, who’s standing just beyond the yellow machine, standing toe to toe with a man who looks just like him, except older, except angrier. Derek knows instantly that this is the boy’s father, knows instantly that he’s not going to like what he’s about to see.
And yet, Derek stays. He stays behind his tree, in hiding, and watches.
Derek can’t hear the exchange, not over the sound of his own heavy breathing, his own wild heartbeat, his own ringing in his ears. Derek can’t hear a thing, but he watches them anyway. He watches as the father’s mouth moves over words that Derek can’t listen to, even though he must be shouting with the way spit collects at the corner of his lips, with the way his face contorts in ridiculous expressions. He watches this boy who’s tall – taller than Derek, probably – but still manages to shrink under the sight of his father going red in the face. He watches as the father puts two hands on his son, pushes him back hard enough that the kid stumbles, but doesn’t fall over completely. He watches as the boy’s eyes scrunch closed. He’s barely steady on his feet, but, still, he closes his eyes and braces himself for something that doesn’t come.
Because the father just laughs, as if satisfied, and walks away. He leaves his son standing there, shaking like a leaf with eyes opening so slowly and so wet with fluttering eyelashes and tears falling to meet the grassy ground of the cemetery.
ISAAC
Isaac knows what’s going to happen before the sun has even started rising, before his dad is even close to showing up. He’s been working for his father, in this cemetery, long enough to know that he’s not going to have time to dig all these graves before the morning. He curses the stupid animal attacks of Beacon Hills, the stupid people who couldn’t have waited just a few more days to be killed. (Isaac also knows, obviously, that they’re not to blame, but, still.) He knows what’s going to happen, but he keeps working anyway, keeps hoping beyond hope and forcing himself not to look at the familiar tombstones of his mother and brother.
Isaac works tirelessly from dusk till dawn, from sunset to sunrise. Never mind the fact that he has school tomorrow and will be running on zero sleep. Isaac just keeps working, zones in on the mindless task of operating the excavator and digging graves. He just keeps going through the motions, even though he knows it’s futile. Because it’s better, he thinks, to have something to show for, to show his dad that he tried.
Isaac also knows that that won’t matter, that the rationality in his dad died when Camden did. But, still, Isaac can try his best and hope for mercy. He doesn’t hope for reprieve, doesn’t hope for a breakthrough, a miracle of his dad returning to the person he used to be before. He lost faith in that child’s dream years ago.
Now, he just does the work and awaits the inevitable.
It’s Isaac’s personal hell, trapped in this period of waiting, knowing what awful fate lies ahead of him. Part of him urges time to speed up, pleads with the God he doesn’t believe in to just get this over with. While, simultaneously, the larger part of him watches the sky slowly fading with dread in his stomach and poison fear in his veins.
Isaac wonders, briefly, if this is hell, then what is he being punished for?
It’s not a good thought to entertain, but there’s nothing else to think about when he’s surrounded by the scent of fresh dirt and the quiet sounds of nature at night. There’s nothing else to think about but Camden, but the way he practically asked Isaac for permission to join the military, and Isaac didn’t stop him. There’s nothing else to think about, so Isaac tortures himself for hours, digging into frozen ground as the new day dawns around him and the moment of truth drags closer.
When the sun is really starting to rise, when it’s peeking over the horizon, Isaac is still working on the fourth grave. He still has at least four hours of work left until he’s finished with all six, and he knows his dad will be here in less than two. And so, Isaac’s numb hands go shaky with fear, his brow wet with sweat, but he just keeps working.
He keeps working until he’s starting on the fifth grave, and thinks it might end up being his own as the familiar, terrifying glow of his dad’s headlights shine over the cemetery. The engine peters out and the lights go with it, leaving only the orange glow of sunrise that should be beautiful, but is instead eerie, instead the bloody backdrop for the horrors that are about to unfold.
“Isaac.”
His name sounds awful in his dad’s voice, sounds like a curse more than it does a gift bestowed upon his son. It sounds like nails on a chalkboard, a scraping sound of agony that makes Isaac’s eyes burn and his heart skip several beats.
Isaac cuts the engine of the excavator, climbs down, and meets his father.
Every part of him wants to cower in fear, but he stands across from him and doesn’t blink. His eyes go dry and burn even fiercer than the stinging of impending tears, but Isaac doesn’t let them close. He keeps his shoulders back and stares in the eyes of his father, meets his angered expression and his bark of, “What the hell is this?”
Isaac doesn’t say anything. It’s not his smartest move, but there’s nothing he can do right now that is smart. There’s nothing he can do that will stop this from happening, no logic or excuse he can speak that his dad won’t twist into something ugly and dangerous, something like ammunition and finger shaped bruises.
“Huh?” his father says, volume rising too loud for the fragile quiet of the morning. “I thought I told you I needed six graves by morning?”
It’s barely a question when his dad says it. It’s more like a slap in the face, more like a punch to the stomach.
“I–”
Isaac starts, but never finishes. Because his father’s hands find his shoulders, pushing him back and making him stumble. Isaac almost trips, almost falls back where he knows there’s a fresh hole in the ground. It makes his stomach tighten with panic, makes images of the freezer flash in his mind, so bright and real that he has no choice but to close them. He squeezes his eyelids shut tight, readies himself for the feeling of the ground falling out beneath him, for the feeling of a swift blow.
But neither comes.
Isaac hears his dad scoff a breath of laughter, as if amused by this torment and the way Isaac cowers in his presence. Isaac hears the sound of footfall, hears him moving away, hears his dad leaving.
He opens his eyes and expels a breath of relief as tears fall over his cheeks. He wipes those away just as quickly as they fall, just in case his dad is still lingering, just in case he sees and finds something to be annoyed at in the reaction that Isaac can’t fight. And, when his skin is dry of tears, Isaac looks up and around the cemetery, looks out and sees the car headlights shining and fading away again as he drives off, leaving Isaac to walk the five miles to school.
He doesn’t mind, really.
Isaac steps forward, away from the open hole and the grave behind him, pauses a moment to decide what to do. There’s no option that isn’t punishable, leaving the graves unfinished or staying to complete the work and thereby missing class. There’s no option that’ll keep Isaac safe, but there never is.
Isaac hears rustling to his left. He snaps his head in that direction, fast enough that he almost gives himself whiplash. But, of course, there’s nothing. There’s nothing in the woods but animals whose peace his father must have disturbed, creatures that must have woken under the rumbling engine, bright lights, and shouting words.
Isaac whispers in that direction, a quiet, “Sorry.”
And then, he makes up his mind. Finish the last two graves. He’ll only be missing Coach’s class anyway. And, maybe, if he’s not there, then someone will notice. Because Isaac doesn’t have the heart to speak up for himself, too scared of the repercussions if he isn’t believed. Yet, he’s still holding out for a savior. Yet, he’s still waiting for a hero to swoop in and protect him.
But, of course, Isaac knows it won’t happen. No one ever notices.