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It’s September 7th.
It’s been three years since Boyd died, since Isaac went paralyzed with grief and a shattering of pack bonds. It’s been three years since Isaac watched Derek’s claws meet his skin, since the alphas forced Boyd’s weight into Derek’s hands. It’s been three years since Boyd whispered about lunar eclipses, since he whispered those fateful words of it’s okay. It’s been three years since Boyd bled out, since he fell into the water with a morbid splash. It’s been three years since the scent of ozone and copper burned at Isaac’s nose, since he saved Jennifer’s life over his friend’s because he didn’t know any better.
It’s been three years. It doesn’t feel long enough. It doesn’t feel like any time has passed at all.
When the moon is full and bright in the sky, when it rains and electricity mixes with water in bolts of lightning, Isaac thinks of him and he thinks of Erica too. They’re connected even now, even in death they can’t be separated. Thoughts of Boyd lead to thoughts of Erica and there’s nothing Isaac can do to keep them at bay. There’s nothing he can do to forget them, to heal this messy scar that lingers around his heart like an eternal darkness.
The loss hasn’t gotten any easier.
He doesn’t think of them always, not everyday, but they come to him like clockwork. They never stay away for long and Isaac, truthfully, doesn’t want them to. He doesn’t want to lose them more than he already has, doesn’t want to lose what precious moments they had together.
He doesn’t want to forget, but that doesn’t make remembering any easier. And, on a day like today, on a day where the calendar turns to a date made in their honor, he can’t…
He can’t do anything but honor them all the same. He can’t do anything but stand on the sidewalk, outside the apartment, with Scott at his side, a final send off as Isaac prepares to get in the Jeep and drive back to Beacon Hills – his first return since the visit in June for Liam and Mason and Corey’s graduation.
Scott reaches out to touch him, fingertips sneaking up the sleeve of a familiar rust brown jacket to circle his wrist, to find his pulsepoint and memorize it. The affection is as gentle as his words are when he says, “I can still come with you. I’m sure my mom would be happy to entertain me for an afternoon.”
Isaac gives him a soft smile, an attempt at reassurance that falls flat, that falls to something sad in the downturning of his lips. He says, “I’ll be alright.”
He doesn’t know for sure if it’s true, but he thinks it probably isn’t. He thinks, despite what Boyd might’ve said the first time September 7th came to mean anything at all, there’s no way to be okay on a day like this one, no way to be okay when someone so dear is lost forever. There’s no possibilities of a positive spin, none of that typical Scott McCall optimism to shine like the sun over the shadows of this grief and reminiscence.
Isaac’s words probably aren’t true, but Scott accepts them anyway, knows that what Isaac really means is: you can’t do this for me.
Scott could tag along, could sit in the passenger seat and offer company and warmth and the domestic comfort of practiced affection. He could tag along and he could help ease Isaac through this, but Isaac doesn’t want easy. He doesn’t want to make this smooth and steady. He wants to feel it.
He wants a moment alone for all of this. He wants to drive with the windows down. He wants to feel every beat of his heart as just a single entity, as a single pulse instead of three woven together in time forever – as they were supposed to be, but as they never would be.
Scott knows Isaac isn’t actually alright, but he also knows he can’t take part in this when he didn’t really know either of them, didn’t know Erica or Boyd like Isaac did. (Faintly and without much certainty, with a forced connection and a whole lot of wasted potential. With time cut short and broken, with grief more than anything else.) And so, Scott squeezes at Isaac’s wrist, gives a nod, and says, “Okay, honey.”
Then, he uses his hold on Isaac to drag him in closer, to press something delicate and soft into the corner of his mouth. It’s a kiss, brief and fleeting and reminding Isaac that the world isn’t all terrible, that there are still good things, that Beacon Hills brought him more than just death and destruction. Isaac pushes further into him, takes the peck and deepens it, feels his cold lips thaw with the rays of Scott McCall.
Isaac grants himself this one moment of reprieve, this one moment to alleviate the terror of it all.
But…
He pulls away. He lets Scott stroke his thumb over his skin one more time, then he pulls that away too, pulls his wrist from his grip and ducks out from under the comfort he doesn’t entirely deserve when he’s not entirely innocent in the hauntings of this day.
“I love you,” Scott says. Because he never can let Isaac out of his sight without saying it. Not since the first time he said, not since that night in his bed with the comforters tucked up around their ears, not since the start of the war of Beacon Hills.
“I love you too,” Isaac echoes. It’s harder today than it usually is, feels like glass scraping up his throat when he thinks of how many times those words were passed between him and Erica and Boyd. (Not once when he was involved, but who knows when he wasn’t in the room, in the vault. Not once when it was him because he was too fucked up to appreciate them when he had the chance, to savor every second, to capture what could’ve been in the bonds of wolves turned from the same bite.)
Scott doesn’t kiss him again, doesn’t touch him again. He takes a step back, away from the curb and closer to the apartment building they’ve started to call home. Isaac lets him move even though it physically pains him, feels like threat and risk and history repeating. He lets himself separate from Scott, leaving him behind like Isaac never has before. He says nothing else as he gets in the Jeep, as he starts up the engine with just a little splutter of a fight, as he turns out of this street of theirs and towards the highway.
—
It’s hard to be alone with his thoughts, but, still, Isaac doesn’t turn the radio on. He opens the windows just as he imagined. It’s harsh when he’s driving as fast he is, nearing seventy-five miles per hour as the world spins past him in a blur of blue and green. The wind stings a little, burns past his ears and wraps around his throat like a noose waiting to be tightened, but Isaac doesn’t mind it, really.
It’s a physical sensation to match the pain inside, the agony of remembering.
Isaac knows that what he had with Erica and Boyd was special. He knows that there’s something that cannot be erased in those first two months of the supernatural experienced together. It was a terrible time for Isaac: losing his father, turning homeless, becoming a monster, chasing down the kanima, being punished by a surly and stupid alpha. It was an awful confluence of events, an awful combination of traumas too much to be lumped together like that.
And yet…
When Isaac thinks of those times, it’s with rose colored glasses. It’s with the simplicity of a pack still whole and not yet fractured by death. When he looks back, it’s with the wishful thinking of what if and what could’ve been, it’s with a fantasy of the three of them still alive today.
When he imagines that life, it feels almost real. When he thinks of Boyd and Erica, he can still feel them there. He can feel their wolves intertwined with his, can feel their initials carved into his bones, can feel them circling his heart again and again. He can feel them there like a phantom limb, like something he keeps reaching for or an itch he keeps trying to scratch. He feels them like a craving that can’t be sated, like a memory on the tip of his tongue but not certain enough to be spoken.
He feels them there and it should be terrible, awful. It should be devastating when he knows it’s not real. They’re so wrapped up in him, but they’re buried six feet under. They’re not standing at his side, not among the living, and there’s no changing that. Feeling them day after day should be painful, terrible, awful.
But it’s not. It feels like they’re still with him and they always will be, feels like they’ve been looking out for him, protecting him, saving him. It feels like he’s not alone.
That, more than anything, is what makes those two feeble months with them so special. They were barely friends and they barely knew each other, but they had something to share. They had this new life and these new abilities. They had new things to discover and they discovered them together. They were always there, and Isaac, despite the trauma of it all and his grief sending him into solitude, was never alone. Not fully and not completely. He should’ve been, but he wasn’t. The loss of his father should’ve left him estranged, more abandoned than he ever had been before, but he wasn’t.
Because he had something new. For a short moment, he had new friends, had peers, had equals. For a short moment, his experiences were no longer solitary, were shared.
It didn’t last, though, and there’s no world where it would have. There’s no world where Derek doesn’t bite Jackson, where he doesn’t become the kanima, where that isn’t too much for Erica and Boyd to take – too much for them when they didn’t have monsters like Isaac did, like his father was. There’s no world where they stay and there’s no world where Isaac goes with them. There’s no world where Isaac leaves when Scott needs his help, when he does everything but outright ask him to stay.
There’s no world where things are different, but Isaac wishes there was. As happy as he is with where he’s ended up now, as happy as he is with the life he’s starting to build outside the walls of Beacon Hills, he’d be happier still if Erica and Boyd were with him even now.
Isaac, after a while, can’t take it anymore – the silence, the guilt, the grief. He turns on the radio and turns to Stiles’ most annoying habit: drumming on the wheel and humming along, just to find some outlet for the restlessness within him, for the guilt and grief playing tug of war inside him.
—
It’s familiar, returning to the loft and parking in front of this building. There are so many memories here, some amazingly bright and some painstakingly dark. There is so much inside, but Isaac, for now, doesn’t go in. Isaac, for a moment, sits in the Jeep and looks up to where he knows the comfort of home resides, where he knows there’s a couch and a pack mate waiting for him.
Isaac takes this moment to breathe. He takes this moment to be alone because, he knows, as soon as he steps into that space and into Derek’s arms, it’s going to really begin. It’s going to be more than just a feeling buried deep within himself. It’s going to become something shared, something amplified by their joint connection and experience, something blooming and willowing overhead.
Isaac swallows down air and sends off a text to Scott, a message that reads with: Made it.
Then, he powers down his phone. Then he clicks out of his seatbelt and steps out of the Jeep, then his feet find the pavement and he enters the building and the elevator, then he pretends his heart doesn’t rocket up as the elevator does the same.
The metal doors slide open and Isaac is met with another door just the same, another sliding door and a lock box and an alarm code. Isaac could knock and Derek would let him in, but Isaac doesn’t knock. It’s routine to, instead, insert the code, to press these buttons and do it himself. It feels less like Isaac is visiting this way and more like he’s returning home, like he’s returning to a space that he has so much claim over, that is as much his as it is Derek’s. So, Isaac inputs those seven numbers of a name he really shouldn’t consider right now, and, when the lock beeps and the latch comes free, Isaac pulls open the door with a sliding scrape of metal.
He freezes.
Isaac stands in the doorway, on the edge of the expansive open floor plan. The entire loft sprawls out in front of him. The big window in his immediate eye line, the spiral staircase to his left, the kitchen to his right. It all comes back to him: that night and that fight and the water that filled the floor. And Isaac…
Isaac can’t move.
In that moment, it feels like electricity has seized his muscles, has shocked him still and paralyzed him. In that moment, he can’t move an inch, but then…
But then, Derek is there and he grounds Isaac in the present. He anchors him as he joins him in the entryway, as he blocks his view of the single room by pulling him into a hug. He gets too close and then comes even closer, wraps Isaac in his arms without saying hello or asking permission. He comes to Isaac and Isaac collapses into him, breathes out shuddering and shaking as the loft fills with the sharp, acrid scent of pain.
It’s their grief and their muscle memory. It’s that night and this day.
It’s everywhere, but Isaac buries himself in Derek’s shoulder, neck craning uncomfortably to get in close, to breathe in the familiar scents of home that lie underneath the bitterness of it all. Underneath the bruising is Derek and lemon and the first home Isaac ever chose for himself, the first family he ever felt after Camden left for war.
Underneath, is Derek’s heartbeat, steady and even and not too fast or too slow. Underneath, is the proof of life, the proof of not alone.
“Derek,” Isaac whispers, soft and barely there, a ghost of breath when he doesn’t have the strength for volume or a proper greeting.
“Isaac,” Derek returns, hand coming up to the base of his skull, fingers slipping between Isaac’s curls in a move so reminiscent of brothers gone and brothers new.
Isaac falls back then because he has to, because he’ll fall apart if he doesn’t and this is only just beginning. This is only the start of this visit to Beacon Hills and this day and this purpose of theirs, this premeditated meeting on the seventh day of September. This idea to honor Boyd and Erica, to memorialize them, to miss them and grieve them and remember them as they so often try not to do.
Isaac falls back and then stands up straight again, tall enough to see over Derek’s shoulder, tall enough for the loft to come back into his line of sight, his field of vision. Isaac expects, again, to be brought back to September 7th of 2011, but, instead, he finds himself somewhere else entirely.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” asks Boyd.
Boyd seems barely conscious right now, collapsing back against the couch as Isaac makes peace with sleeping on the floor tonight. Boyd certainly can’t return home to his parents when his wounds from Derek’s claws – cleaned mechanically and routinely by Isaac – are still healing, when his shirt is as torn up as he is, when he looks on the brink of death.
Isaac tries not to think about that. He tries not to consider just how close he was to losing both of them, how easily Derek could’ve killed him in the basement of the school.
Derek could’ve, but he didn’t.
It shouldn’t be a revelation, but it is. It’s a surprise that Derek let Boyd live when he seemed, for a moment, like more trouble than he was worth, like saving him would do them more harm than good. For a moment, Isaac thought Derek would sink his claws in and kill him, but he didn’t. He held Boyd off, kept them both alive – beta and alpha. He kept them alive until the sun came up, until Isaac could bring Boyd back to the loft with the help of Scott and Argent while Derek dealt with the innocent teacher who had just narrowly escaped a harrowing fate.
Derek didn’t kill Boyd.
Boyd is here, now, in front of Isaac. He’s bloodied and tired and speaking so slow and gravely. Isaac wonders if that’s from fatigue or from days and weeks spent silently in a bank vault all by himself – no one to speak to and no one to hear his cries for help.
Isaac tries not to think about the freezer.
He tries, instead, to focus on the relief of Boyd suddenly being here, bloodied and tired but here. Months have passed without him, with a constant absence to match the absence of Erica that will never go away. Months went by, but now Boyd is back. Now, Boyd is here and Isaac tries to focus on that instead, to keep his mind on this one moment in the aftermath of the full moon.
“What d’you mean?” he asks.
“It was you,” Boyd says again. “Who found us – me. Who found me.”
They already went through this in the elevator. Boyd already expressed his gratitude and Isaac already had to hide the fact that he felt like a failure when Erica was dead. When he found her body in a janitor’s closet but still couldn’t remember that, still couldn’t remember what she looked like – a good thing, probably. They already went through the unnecessary thank you, but, still, Boyd is giving Isaac credit and implying more than Isaac can stomach.
“It was a group effort,” Isaac says, deflects. Because it was. It was Isaac and Derek and Peter. It was the girl who saved his life. It was Scott and Deaton and Stiles too. It was Argent, even. It wasn’t just Isaac. He isn’t the hero here, but Boyd is looking at him like maybe he is.
“But you found the bank first,” Boyd says. And Isaac wants to ask how he knows that, wants to ask if Boyd heard him just as Isaac heard Boyd. Isaac wants to understand what Boyd is getting at, but Boyd doesn’t let him ask. He’s too quick in switching the subject. He aims for humor and that’s so unlike Boyd. It’s so unlike him to cover up his hurt. It’s so unlike him to be anything but genuine, sincere, authentic. It’s so unlike him, and yet, he says, “I guess I can understand your claustrophobia now.”
And there’s humor there that doesn’t belong. Because Boyd is playing with something dangerous, playing with fire and chains and basement memories that are too close to the surface tonight.
Isaac should curse at him, should be mad at him, but, somehow, he cracks a smile. Somehow, he says, “Yeah, I don’t think so. I saw that vault. Seemed pretty roomy to me.”
And it’s a lie.
They both know Isaac never saw the inside. That’s the reason Erica is dead. Because Isaac found the bank but couldn’t get inside the vault. Because Isaac found the bank but was caught before he could make himself useful, had his memories stolen and had his body shoved in a closet far smaller than the vault probably was – Isaac saw the blueprints of the building, at least.
Boyd doesn’t say anything else on the topic. He announces, seemingly out of the blue and more tender and soft than Isaac has ever heard him, “I’m tired.”
Isaac doesn’t try to put himself in Boyd’s shoes. He doesn’t try to imagine the torture he’s undergone since that night in April when he and Erica left and Isaac stayed behind. He doesn’t allow his mind to go there, doesn’t allow himself to consider how far the tiredness extends, past physicalities and into the emotional upheaval and the grief that is so exhausting, that so surrounds them both. Isaac doesn’t allow himself to go there, but he does allow himself the courage to stay, “Sleep. We’re safe now.”
It’s another lie. And, again, they both know that, but Boyd accepts it like it’s true and closes his eyes. Isaac keeps his own open, watches over him long after Derek has returned, long after the immediate threat has fallen away.
Isaac blinks and the memory slips out of reach, replaced with the sound of Derek’s voice saying, “It’s the anniversary of Boyd’s death.”
His name on Derek’s tongue is a rarity and a pain Isaac can’t explain, but, worse than that, is the audience. Worse than that is Derek saying his name to Theo. Theo who might’ve been here the whole time, but who Isaac hasn’t noticed until this moment. Theo who is standing awkwardly, too close to the wall to not be on purpose, whose eyes are flicking back and forth between them as his nose wrinkles with something like distaste or disgust.
His presence and his hearing of this name makes adrenaline surge inside Isaac, pure and unbridled and rooted in the past. It’s a fight or flight response and a memory of the comic store, of Isaac on one side of the counter and Theo on the other. It’s the last time Isaac let Theo so close to his grief, it’s his twisting words and his making of ammunition out of hypothermia and bridges and creeks in the woods. It’s Camden’s name in Theo’s mouth and his watchful gaze in Isaac’s direction, a gaze Isaac steals from him now. His eyes are as cold as the water Tara drowned in, just daring Theo to breathe in Boyd’s direction, to breathe his name into existence.
Theo doesn’t, though.
He knows better, says nothing as he stands there, observing as Derek catches Isaac’s arm and guides him over to the couch, to settle in for a moment. Isaac can’t calm though. Not until Theo gets the hint and leaves through the sliding door, not until he’s gone and the sanctity of the loft is restored, when it’s just the two of them again.
Two of them when it should be four.
—
They linger in the loft longer than they should. They both know their plans don’t fit this space, they both know their plans are going to take them out into the town of Beacon Hills and walking down memory lane. They both know their time is limited as Isaac has to drive back to Davis tonight, but they waste it anyway. They sit on this couch, tucked in too close but unable to create distance between them with the threat of pain that lingers in the air as they linger in the loft.
Derek makes small talk like he almost never does. He asks about Isaac’s drive and his first week of classes in the week prior, in the week leading up to this Sunday and this new beginning filled to the brim with things old and gone and past. He makes small talk and Isaac wants to scold him for it, wants to knock him out of this stupor of stupidity, but he doesn’t. He accepts the break after that memory, after the implications of thinking Derek was going to kill Boyd in the school’s basement. The fact that he didn’t, but the fact that he was just delaying the inevitable. That the alphas were always pushing them towards that fate.
That it could’ve just as easily been Isaac instead of Boyd.
They hide out in the loft where the worst memory lies. They hide here where Boyd’s body once drifted away from them, floating away in the water of a plan that could’ve been so genius if it had only worked. They hide here because this is obvious. On this day, on the anniversary, there is no avoiding Boyd and electricity and Derek’s claws. There is no avoiding water up to their ankles and the twins and Kali and Jennifer Blake. There is no avoiding this memory. This is obvious, but what lies outside that sliding door is anything but.
Neither one knows what to expect when this journey of memoriam finally, really begins. They don’t know what they’ll be greeted with, and that makes it harder than this, harder than the obvious.
So, they sit close and they share words that hold no depth and no meaning. They linger in the loft because it’s safer than what lies outside this building that is made of memories good and bad, but is, ultimately, their home. They linger in the loft that has such a complicated and sometimes painful history, but is, ultimately, a haven for them both, a refuge from the storm and a shelter from the lightning that waits outside for them.
—
They both know the endgame is the cemetery, but they hold off. They don’t go there first, can’t when it’s too emotionally charged, when they need to ease into it. They both know where this is headed, but Derek drives aimlessly with Isaac in the passenger seat, lets his instincts guide him as Isaac tries not to remember the hours spent in this car during high school. It would be enough to break him if he did: the nostalgia of this shared space and the memories here that aren’t connected, that aren’t the point of today’s adventure.
Isaac tries to ignore it all, looking out the window instead, as Derek, expectedly, drives them through the warehouse district.
If Derek knows what he’s doing and what building he’s driving them by, he doesn’t say anything. If he knows or if it’s on purpose, he gives Isaac no indication. But, nonetheless, they pass the metal walls of the place where the rave once took place, where the pounding vibration of music ensnared Isaac as much as Stiles’ ring of mountain ash did.
The rave where Isaac had his first kiss.
It’s too loud and too crowded. This place would be too much for Isaac even before the bite dialed him up to eleven, turned him even more twitchy and oversensitive than he already was. It’s too much, too much, too much. It’s too much, but Isaac doesn’t have any other choice than to persevere. The syringe has been placed in his hands and Erica has been tucked against his side and they’ve got their eyes on the target, on Jackson slipping between writhing bodies.
Erica leads the way and Isaac follows her because he’s supposed to and because it’s easy, it’s easy to get tugged into her gravity, to let her charge ahead as Isaac stumbles clumsily behind her. He tries his best to paint himself with confidence, with nonchalance. He tries to act like he belongs here, tries not to look as painfully out of place as he feels. Because the burden of success is on his shoulders now, the capturing and sedating of Jackson is up to him now, the syringe is in his hands.
They get close enough to corner him, to catch Erica between Jackson and Isaac, to get three bodies moving in sync as one being, as one trio formed by the bite of one alpha. And then… then they’re dancing, like this really is just a party and not a mission, like they can distract Jackson with the heady pulse of the music and the warm touch of skin on skin.
Jackson lets them get close, lets them dance against him, lets them put on a show.
Erica is looking up at Isaac, dark brown eyes reflecting the neon lights of the rave. She’s grinning at him, something dangerous tucked in the corner of her mouth. She looks ravenous and monster, looks like the werewolf she is, looks like she belongs in this space.
She presses up to close the height difference between them, losing some of the grace of her dancing as she does, and then she’s so close that they’re nearly kissing. Her top lip brushes Isaac’s bottom lip like a question, like she’s asking for permission. And Isaac can’t explain it but he grants it to her, leans down enough to make the contact full bodied, searing colorful and harsh between them, louder than the buzzing bass of the speakers and brighter than the flashing lights.
Erica’s lips are against Isaac’s. They’re kissing. It’s messy and over enthusiastic. It’s clumsy and wetter than Isaac thought it would be. It’s bold and blinding and not what Isaac thinks a first kiss is supposed to be. It’s not cautious and slow, it’s not romantic and intimate. It’s not true love in the touch of their lips, but Isaac doesn’t care. It’s closeness, it’s friendship, it’s connection.
It’s something Isaac has never experienced before, something he wasn’t sure he would ever experience.
It lasts only a moment before Erica pulls away, before she starts kissing Jackson instead. It lasts only a moment before their priorities reset, before Isaac readies the plunger in his hand, before he remembers Scott’s words: be careful. I don’t want to see you get hurt.
And it’s sort of funny, in hindsight, how only moments after his kiss with Erica – his first kiss – Isaac’s mind strayed to Scott. It’s ironic and a little bit like a twisted joke, but Isaac doesn’t laugh as the building disappears in the rearview and the ground bumps under the car.
He sits silent and thinks, then, about firsts and Erica Reyes. He thinks, then, how grateful he is that he got to share that with her. It’s something he will always carry with him, a story he will always tell when the question arises, when the conversation turns to one of adolescence and first kisses. It’s an honor. It’s a gift that he gets to share that with Erica.
It wasn’t romantic and it never would have been, not with the two of them. It’s not what a first kiss is supposed to be, is expected to be, but it’s the only one Isaac can imagine. It’s the only one he would ask for. It’s the only one he would want to have.
—
It’s no surprise when they arrive at the abandoned train depot.
Derek parks the car without a word and Isaac follows him out into the place where they used to sleep, to the place that was never home but was shelter when the hunters ran Derek out of the Hale house and the kanima ran Isaac out of his own childhood home.
Isaac can’t help it when he laughs a little, this soft exhale, this soft click at the back of his throat. He doesn’t mean to, knows full well that it’s not the time for any of this, but he can’t stop the noise from leaving him. Not when he hasn’t been here since Derek bought the loft building, only a few days after Jackson shipped off to London and Gerard was checked into a nursing home. Not when he knows Derek brought him here for the memory of Erica and Boyd’s first full moon and Isaac’s second, for the memory of Isaac finding his initial anchor in don’t become him and he didn’t used to, for the two of them working together to contain Erica and Boyd. Isaac knows why they’re here, but, still, that’s not the memory that comes to him first.
Derek turns to look at him, to glare at him with a lack of heat behind his eyes and a warning of, “Don’t.”
Isaac presses his lips together hard, shakes his head and doesn’t say a word about it. Because he can’t bring it up today. Because he knows Derek still doesn’t forgive himself for the person he was when this was their hideout. He knows Derek still doesn’t forgive the choices he made and the punishments he doled out. He knows today isn’t the day to broach that topic, to make inappropriate jokes about the snapping of bone.
Because it won’t be funny today. Because it wasn’t funny when it first happened either.
It’s not Isaac’s first broken bone. He meant it when he told Derek he had a few already, had a few injuries that needed a few hours to heal. It wasn’t exactly the hundred that he snarked about, but it was one or two and now it’s definitely closer to three. But, even before today, it’s not his first broken bone. Even before werewolf healing, it’s not the first break inflicted by someone that was supposed to help him, look after him, take care of him.
Isaac cradles his arm against his stomach. It’s not healing as fast as it should, as fast as the bones broken by a fall instead of Derek’s hands. Isaac doesn’t understand that, doesn’t yet know the source of the delay, but it’s happening anyway. It’s healing slower than it should be. It’s painful and Isaac pants and whines as he leans back against metal.
Isaac should be used to this. It’s not his first broken bone. And it is healing. It won’t require a cast or weeks of lying about what happened. Isaac should be used to this, should be strong enough to deal with this, but he sort of feels like crying right now.
“Are you okay?” Boyd asks when Derek’s footsteps have retreated, when he’s stormed out for another one of his mysterious solo missions, for another instance of leaving them in the dark. Derek leaves and Boyd speaks up, asks a question that should be gentle, but isn’t. Boyd’s voice isn’t very soft or very kind. It’s just his usual tone, and that’s enough that Isaac looks over at him, meets his eyes and finds no pity or real sympathy there. If Boyd is concerned, if he cares, he’s hiding it well. And Isaac… appreciates that – as twisted as it sounds. He should be seeking out comfort and affection, but he doesn’t understand those things, doesn’t know how to accept them even as he craves them. He can only handle this, can only handle Boyd’s usual tone and his usual schooled expression.
“Of course he isn’t,” Erica says, cuts across before Isaac can lie and say that he’s fine.
Isaac opens his mouth to begin a protest anyway, but Erica doesn’t let him say a single thing. She pushes up from her spot on the ground – a little shaky with her own injuries and fatigue – and she comes to sit beside him. She keeps enough distance between them that she’s not touching him at all, doesn’t risk knocking into the jut of his broken limb. She respects his boundaries, but she toes at them a little, pushes more than Isaac would let most people. But he lets her.
Because he knew Erica before all of this.
They weren’t close, were barely enough to be considered friends, but they were anyway. They had no one else and nothing stronger, so they were friends before all of this. Erica knew Isaac before the bite took him over and he knew her before the bite transformed her. They were friends before, and so Isaac grants Erica this privilege, grants her this chance to come close but not touch.
Boyd, though, never knew either of them. Boyd, though, stands awkwardly on the edge of the room. Boyd, though, watches them with something flickering in his eyes, something curious and intrigued and wanting.
Erica says, like an order or a demand, “Get over here.”
Boyd listens because it’s Erica, because she’s impossible not to listen to. Boyd closes the gap between them, but, smartly, he doesn’t sit on Isaac’s other side. Instead, he lets Erica be their center, their axis. He sits down beside her and none of them speak, none of them say anything as the room is filled only with the sound of their breaths coming into sync and Isaac’s soft noises of pain that no one mentions or addresses again.
The three of them sit with their backs against the wall, wondering when Derek will return and wondering what catastrophe he’ll bring with him then. The three of them sit together and Isaac doesn’t know what the two of them are thinking, but he’s thinking that he could get used to this. He could get used to broken bones and Derek being just like every evil Isaac accepted the bite to escape. He could get used to this if he didn’t have to do it alone, if Erica and Boyd could become the pack he was promised, the connection they all crave like they’re drowning for it.
Isaac could get used to this. He could live with the pain if he didn’t have to do it alone anymore.
“What’re you thinking about?” Derek asks him. He’s not looking at Isaac anymore. He’s standing, instead, at the edge of the train car, back turned and just shy of entering the space. He won’t, though, Isaac knows. He’ll just continue to stand there, palm pressed to the metal and memories of anchors and chains playing in his mind.
Isaac tells him, “You know what I’m thinking about.”
He’s certain Derek does. He’s certain Derek knows he can’t return to this space without going there. He can’t not remember the broken arm and the pain that came with it. He can’t not remember the since mended and redeemed and overcome betrayal of Derek’s grip turning so punishing so quickly. He can’t not remember sitting with Erica and Boyd in the aftermath, knowing how bad things still were but knowing that he’d continue to suffer through it if he wasn’t suffering alone.
“Right,” Derek says. He does look over his shoulder then, at Isaac, and he smiles faintly, not amused but not devastated either.
Isaac nods and they stop talking after that.
—
The gate of the cemetery stands in front of them, but neither Derek nor Isaac moves to enter.
It’s because of him, Isaac knows.
This space doesn’t hold the same feelings for Derek, the same history in the Lahey last name. In his brother, his dad, his friends all buried here.
Isaac hasn’t been back since the first semester of senior year, since the day before his eighteenth birthday, since it was Camden that he was here to visit. He hasn’t been here since he shared this space with Jordan Parrish, since the grand reveal of his friendship with Isaac’s brother and the unexpected connection forged between them.
Isaac hasn’t been back since then.
But he’s here now because this is where this has to end, because he and Derek have to find Erica and Boyd’s tombstones, because they have to visit them.
“Ready?” Derek asks. Again, a question he knows the answer to.
Isaac gives him his honesty and the words of, “not even slightly,” but then he’s unsticking his feet from the ground and approaching the iron gates regardless. But then, he’s pushing through them and stepping into a place steeped with heartache and melancholy and transformation.
Isaac leads the way because Derek won’t go in without him. Isaac leads the way because, though it’s a near impossibility for him to return here, he knows that he has to. He knows that he’s never visited their graves, even when it’s been three years. It’s been far too long and he owes them this much and it’s…
It’s time.
And so, Isaac walks slowly through the cemetery, lets his eyes drag over tombstones as he searches for them, even as he risks meeting familiar names that aren’t Erica or Boyd’s. He lets himself explore even though it’s a great risk to do so, even though, in the end, it’s Derek that finds them first.
He catches Isaac’s wrist, a gentle hold to stop him. Isaac pivots in his direction, turns to follow Derek’s eye line to two small gravestones with no flowers at their base and nobody here to pay their respects, no one but the two of them and their empty hands.
Derek doesn’t let go of Isaac as he starts to walk again, as he moves closer, and Isaac doesn’t mind. He needs the push – or the pull, rather. He needs the guidance and the dragging tug towards bravery, towards the courage to do this.
They get close enough to stand directly in front of the headstones, and, for a moment, Isaac can’t move and neither can Derek. For a moment, the only sign of life is the tightening of Derek’s hold on his forearm. And Isaac, for his part, doesn’t twitch or flinch or startle under the hold that he trusts so much, so blindly. Instead, he melts into it as he stares forward at two headstones he’s never seen before.
Erica Ava Reyes
March 18, 1995 – August 14, 2011
Among the stars
Vernon Gregory Boyd
May 1, 1995 – September 7, 2011
Until we meet again
Isaac scrapes his eyes over the words, the dates, the tragedy in all of this. And then, slowly, he regains the ability to move. Slowly, the paralytic agent drips out of his veins and away from his muscles. Slowly, he moves to kneel and Derek follows his lead, the two of them sitting side by side, in front of these twin graves positioned in the same way.
Erica and Boyd, buried right next to each other. Side by side, not as they died and not as they lived the majority of their lives, but as they should have. They should have always been together. They should have made it out of Beacon Hills, just the two of them alive and well and far away from this town that takes and takes and takes. They should’ve gotten out, even if it meant leaving Isaac behind, even if it meant that Isaac never saw either of them again.
It would be better than this, Isaac knows. If they could’ve been free and happy and at peace together, then Isaac would be okay with being alone. He would be okay with being the one abandoned and left behind. Because, at least then, they’d be okay. At least then, they’d be alive. At least then, Isaac wouldn’t feel this grief and this guilt of being the last one left, the lone survivor. At least then, it would’ve been Isaac’s choice.
He chose not to go with them, but he didn’t choose this. He didn’t choose to find Erica’s dead body – so traumatized by that experience that the memory never has and never will return to him. He didn’t choose to watch Boyd die right in front of him. He didn’t choose to be left behind in such a permanent and awful and unchangeable way.
He chose only to stay and fight while they chose to run on.
When Isaac declared his trust, when Isaac saw the look of determination on Scott’s face as he learned Jackson was playing in tonight’s game, when Isaac left the animal clinic… he knew he wasn’t running.
He arrived at the clinic hoping Scott would ask him to stay, but he didn’t. He didn’t ask anything of Isaac, just told him he wasn’t going anywhere, had too many people to protect. And Isaac told him he had no one. But that wasn’t strictly true. He had two people asking him to come with them, two people that could be his.
And yet, as Isaac walks away from the animal clinic, he knows he’s not going with them. He knows not because anyone has told him to stay, but because he’s made the choice for himself.
Isaac has seen it. He’s seen the smallest glimpse of what he could be if he stayed. He’s experienced the smallest moment of being the good guy, of helping Scott, of having pride in himself and what he’s done. At the rave and at the clinic just now with the dog and its pain. Isaac has gotten just a taste of what it’s like to be the hero and he…
He can’t leave that behind.
Maybe it’s Camden’s voice in his head or maybe it’s his own, but Isaac knows he has to stay. There’s a chance here to be good and trusted and a part of something bigger than himself, and Isaac can’t pass that up. He can’t run from it.
It’s dangerous to stay, but that exhilarating feeling of helping Scott and saving people is worth fighting for. It’s maybe, even, worth dying for.
So, when Isaac finds Erica and Boyd as the final lacrosse game is about to commence, as they stand in front of him with bags over their shoulders, he knows what he has to tell them. But knowing doesn’t make it any easier, doesn’t stop this from being one of the hardest things he’s ever said.
“I can’t go with you.” His voice sounded tiny and thin.
Their faces are worse than he could have ever imagined them to be. Because they don’t look shocked or offended or saddened. They look like they were expecting this, like they knew it was coming, like they asked only out of courtesy and not out of any real hope or want for him tagging along. They look resigned.
“Why not?” Erica asks anyway.
“Derek…” Isaac starts, but doesn’t finish. He knows that this could be goodbye. He knows because when Camden left he never came back. Isaac knows that this could very well be the last time that he ever sees either of them, and, in fact, he sort of hopes it is. He hopes they find what they’re looking for, hopes they find happiness together, hopes they never have to return to this place that has treated them so terribly. And it’s fucked up that Isaac wants to stay in this town that’s treated him even worse. And he can’t really actually explain it, but he knows he has to try. He has to try to give them his honesty. He owes them the truth, at least, in this conversation that could be their last. And so, he clears his throat and starts again, says, “Scott can’t save the kanima all on his own. He needs help and I… want to help him.”
Erica shakes her head, frowns. “Isaac, the kanima is–”
“–Jackson,” Isaac finishes for her. “I know.” The kanima is the same guy who knew Isaac was being abused and let it happen, who never tried to help or bring the truth to light. And Isaac still hates him for that, for that awful choice of his, but it doesn’t matter much now. It happened anyway, even without his help. The sun rose and the truth came out. Isaac says, “I don’t expect you to understand. Honestly, I don’t really understand it myself, but I just… can’t go with you.”
“Okay,” Erica says. Her voice finds some sadness then, but she stays still in front of him, doesn’t move and doesn’t say anything else.
Isaac’s eyes flick to Boyd’s, as if waiting for his approval too, for his begrudging acceptance. But, same as Erica, he doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t say anything at all. He stays still and quiet, so Isaac only nods in his direction. Boyd nods back, and then Isaac turns and walks away. He doesn’t say goodbye and he doesn’t wish them well. He leaves them with a meager explanation, not knowing that, for one of them, Isaac really would never see her again.
Isaac walks away not knowing that those would be his last words to Erica Reyes.
Isaac jolts out of the memory and into tears, into sobs that come from deep within himself, from this darkness that lives in the gaps of his ribs. He chokes a little on the sudden hitching forward, on his hands finding the grass and nearly tearing it up but stopping because he can’t decimate them more than he already has, can’t ruin their graves as he ruined their lives.
He didn’t even try to get Erica to stay.
He got caught by the alphas.
He didn’t remember the bank vault fast enough.
He prioritized Jennifer’s life over Boyd’s.
Isaac didn’t save them when he could have. He could have done things differently, could have changed one action to change the end results entirely, to twist fate into a different path, one less knotted with pain and tragedy. But, instead, he walked away without even so much as a goodbye. He let them leave and he didn’t go with them and–
“Isaac,” Derek says, but it doesn’t mean anything. He’s not asking anything of him, not trying to soothe him. He’s just saying his name as he moves into action, as he shelters Isaac from the storm with strong arms and familiar affection and–
“Derek,” Isaac says, cries, shouts. He doesn’t know how the name leaves his lips but he knows it does as he mourns for them in a way he doesn’t think he ever has before, as he lets himself breathe life into that weeping willow grief with his tears meeting the ground where their bodies lie, so close and yet so out of reach, so tied up in him and yet completely separate too.
They are the start, but not the middle nor the end. They are the first, but they’re not the second nor the last. They are foundational, but they are not here anymore. They have stopped while Isaac has continued on without them, has seen so much transformation since their deaths that they wouldn’t even recognize him today.
They are the beginning of his story, but he is the end of theirs.
—
Back at the loft, Derek makes after-nightmare tea and they sit on the precious couch to drink it. It’s been quiet between them since the cemetery, since the trade off of their names and Isaac’s belly aching sobs. Though, expectantly, it’s Derek who eventually breaks their tentative silence.
“It’s not your fault,” he says between sips of tea, like he’s discussing something so casual, something that’s not completely and entirely soul crushing. “They were going to leave whether we wanted them to or not.”
“We?” Isaac asks. It’s easier to pick up on that little detail than it is to agree that he’s not at least a little bit to blame, that there aren’t things he could have done differently, that he isn’t guilty.
“I tried to get them to change their minds,” Derek says, he’s squeezing his mug too tight, enough that it must be burning his palm just a little, enough to make his skin red to match the scarred skin of Isaac’s. “When they told me they were leaving, I tried to convince them to stay, but it was too late. The damage was already done.”
Isaac remembers the ice bath, remembers the aftermath and their return to this same loft. He remembers Derek’s hand on his shoulder and the fact that Isaac didn’t flinch, the fact that he stood still and felt like Derek was really seeing him for the first time, felt like Derek was almost… proud of him. Isaac remembers what Derek said then, remembers his admittance that, if Erica was dead – because back then it was still up in the air, still something they were denying with everything fiber of strength and hope they had – then it was his fault.
Isaac remembers, too, the hospital room after the cut of the wire and after his body tipped into electrified water, ending in a position far too similar to the one Boyd died in. Isaac remembers Derek sitting in a chair at his bedside, taking his pain in the same way he saved Isaac’s life only a few weeks prior. He remembers Derek tearing himself apart with his words, telling Isaac that he killed them.
And Isaac… Isaac hasn’t done enough to change his mind. He hasn’t done enough to make sure Derek knows that it isn’t his fault either. And so, in an attempt to rectify that, he says, softly, “You didn’t kill them.”
Derek sighs. He puts his mug down on the coffee table, just to find something to do, something to make the seconds pass a little slower as he gathers himself to say, “Maybe not, but I didn’t save them either.”
“You couldn’t’ve,” Isaac says, easy as anything. It’s always this way with the two of them. It’s so easy to look the other in the eye and absolve them of all their sins, easier than it is to look in the mirror and do the same. “Like you said,” Isaac continues, “we couldn’t have stopped them from leaving and the alphas… they knew what they were doing. They had a plan and we were never going to be able to stop it.”
“Are you… talking to me about fate?” Derek says, not enough inflection to be a question as he looks his way with the tiniest touch of amusement in garden green eyes.
Isaac shrugs, gives, “Maybe.” Then, he takes another sip of his tea, lets the honey rest on his tongue like a reminder of the sweetness and goodness of the world. He says, “I don’t know. Today’s not supposed to be about hating or blaming ourselves for what happened. We were supposed to be… remembering them, honoring them.”
“Right,” Derek says. He tips his head back against the couch, body slumping with something exhausted and sad. “And we made it all about us because we are terrible, selfish people.”
They shouldn’t, but the words shock a laugh out of Isaac, something harsh and scoffing as he says, “Speak for yourself.” And, more fondly, “That is not what I’m getting at and you know it.”
“Yeah,” Derek exhales. “Yeah, I do.”
Isaac smiles vaguely, small and barely there. He nudges Derek’s foot with his own and says, simply, “Drink your tea.”
Derek sits up again, reaches for his mug on the coffee table, and does as Isaac tells him without a second thought. The loft, then, passes back into quiet as they sit side by side, drinking after-nightmare tea and remembering, honoring, doing what they set out to do.
—
It’s time to go.
The afternoon is just beginning to slip into the evening and Isaac has a three hour drive back to Davis. He’s stuck around as long as he possibly could, longer than he probably should have. Their mugs are long since empty on the table and Isaac’s thumb is stroking at the wolfsbane scar on his palm as he says, “I need to go.”
“Stay the night,” Derek says at once, like he’s been waiting for the opening for this offering since the moment they returned from the cemetery or, possibly, since the moment Isaac arrived between morning and afternoon. Knowing Derek, Isaac wouldn’t be surprised if it was true, if that were the case. He wouldn’t be surprised if Derek was worried about Isaac, worried about him driving off on his own after the day they just shared.
Truthfully, the worry wouldn’t be entirely unfounded. And yet, Isaac shakes his head and says, “I can’t. I have class tomorrow.”
“You can miss one class,” argues Derek.
“In the second week of the semester? I don’t think so,” Isaac says, moving to stand because he knows if he stays a moment longer Derek will find a way to drag him back in, to convince him.
It wouldn’t be hard to succeed when this space is such a comfort to Isaac, when Derek’s company is so welcome nowadays. It wouldn’t be a difficult feat, but Isaac really does have a morning lecture tomorrow that he really shouldn’t miss, and it’s probably better not to dwell in this grief any longer. It’s probably better to leave now, when they’ve accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. It’s probably best for both of them to move forward, to start the day tomorrow in a new light, outside of each other’s company and their shared sadness and collective memories.
Isaac stands and Derek doesn’t protest again. Instead, he follows Isaac out of the sliding loft door and into the elevator. Instead, he follows Isaac out of the building and onto the sidewalk, to the edge of the curb where the Jeep lies in wait.
“You’ll call me when you get there?” Derek asks, more awkward than he has any reason to be, than he has been in months – if not years.
“I’ll text you,” Isaac says, just because he knows it will push Derek’s buttons, just because he knows it’ll lighten the air between them, thin the atmosphere.
Expectantly, Derek glares at him, gives him that signature deadpan stare and corrects, “You’ll call me.”
“Yes, fine,” Isaac says, playing at annoyed and indignant, but there’s something endeared twitching at the corners of his mouth.
Derek nods his approval and hugs Isaac for the third time today. It’s too much, probably, the amount of touch between them, but it’s not uncommon and it’s not unexpected.
It’s not unwelcome either.
They hug for the last time on September 7th, and, when they part, they don’t say goodbye. Isaac reminds Derek to eat dinner and Derek warns him to be careful in that death trap he calls a car. Isaac laughs and Derek smiles. Isaac gets in the Jeep and Derek stands on the sidewalk as he drives away.
They don’t say goodbye, but it’s enough and it’s the end of a long hard day.
Or, at least, it should be.
—
Isaac, it turns out, is an idiot. He doesn’t mean for it to happen. He intends to drive straight back to Davis, no stops and no delays. And yet, somehow, he ends up at the abandoned form of Beacon Hills First National Bank. And… once he’s there, he can’t bring himself to leave.
It’s a self-inflicted punishment. It’s unwise. It’s idiotic, and yet he gets out of the car and breaks into the building. And, yet, he steps inside for the first time since the actual first time.
The building is as Isaac remembers it to be. Dusty, dirty, maybe a bit more time worn than it was three years ago. It’s the same, but it’s different too. It’s different because there’s no reason for Isaac to tiptoe, to sneak around, to be so quiet. There’s no danger lurking in the dark corners of the room, there’s no one waiting behind each turn to jump out and attack him. There’s nothing here, no missing pack mates and no menacing alphas.
There’s nothing here, but Isaac searches the space like he’s looking for something anyway.
Isaac – because, again, he’s an idiot – finds the janitor’s closet. There’s a part of him, he thinks, that wants to regain that missing memory of his. There’s a part of him that wants to step into this space and be transported back in time once again, to feel the water of the ice bath lapping at his skin and the all consuming claustrophobia of this door being closed. There’s a part of him that wants to remember Erica’s body and the real last time he saw her, not that non-goodbye on the edge of the Hale property, but her body as dead as Boyd’s was the last time Isaac saw him – two weeks later, two weeks after the rescue mission.
There’s a part of him that wants to remember. A completely foolish, self flagellating, terrible part of him. But a part of him nonetheless.
And yet, when Isaac steps inside the janitor’s closet – the irony of the location isn’t lost on him; he doesn’t miss the connections to Allison and the supermoon, but he does ignore those rising thoughts as much as he can – nothing happens. There is no dramatic moment. There is no flashback and falling back in time. There is no return of the trauma of being enclosed in a space with his, at the time, only friend’s dead body.
Isaac breathes out in what he thinks should be relief, but he still doesn’t leave the closet. For some reason, for some motivation he’ll never be able to explain, he moves to sit. He leans back against the far wall and lets his weight drag him down, lets himself sink to the floor. He looks up at the ceiling and just focuses on keeping his lungs moving, on the feeling of the stone ground beneath him. He focuses on the fact that his heart rate doesn’t speed up, on the fact that the panic doesn’t start to crawl up his throat.
He’s waiting for it, but it doesn’t come.
This is the space that taught the alphas of Isaac’s claustrophobia, that gave the twins the knowledge needed to think to lock him in the school’s janitor’s closet with Allison Argent. This is a space where Isaac, though he doesn’t remember it now, must have panicked before. He must have pounded on the walls, must have screamed until his throat bled, must have done everything he could to escape from this, from the small space, from Erica’s body.
But, now, Isaac can just sit here. He can choose to sit here in this small space where, deep down, memories of Erica reside. He can choose to sit here and he doesn’t panic. He’s not comfortable and he’s not happy to be here, but he doesn’t turn to violence. He doesn’t turn to vending machines against doors and ice boxes in the basement. He doesn’t turn to fear and desperation.
He just sits here.
He sits there longer than he should, toying with the idea of going in search of that fabled vault, of entering the space that he’s never entered before. But, just when he’s worked up the nerve to stand, just when he’s making his move, he hears movement that isn’t his own.
Then, Isaac really does startle and panic. Then, he really does worry that the space isn’t as abandoned as he thought it to be. Then, he really does think that he’s not safe like he assumed. Then, Isaac is quick to rush out of this closet, to ensure that whoever’s out there can’t trap him inside. Then, he gets his claws flicked out and his teeth ready to sink into flesh. Then–
“Braeden?” Isaac questions, voice incredulous and slurred through fangs as she stands in front of him, flashlight in hand but otherwise unarmed, otherwise undoubtedly relaxed in the ease of her shoulders and the slow pace of her approaching footsteps. Isaac withdraws his canines, and then, “What the hell are you doing here?”
Braeden shrugs. “Derek texted me earlier. Told me what day it was and that you were coming to town. I… figured you’d end up here, so when he told me you’d left again…” She trails off, shrugs again. She glances down at his claws, smirks a little and says, “You can put those away. There’s no one here but me.”
Isaac listens before he speaks, lets his nails contract back to normal size and length and lethalness, lets them pull back and shrink beneath the cuticle. He listens, but he narrows his eyes at Braeden nonetheless, doesn’t completely drop his suspicion as he looks out at the girl who saved him from this same place three years ago. He stays hesitant as he says, quietly impressed, “That’s one hell of a deduction.”
“It’s my job to find people, Isaac,” Braeden says, forcedly casual. She’s trying to brush him off, trying to pretend like this isn’t a big deal. It’s the same thing she always does when Isaac brings up her initial saving of his life, the motorcycle getaway and the high speed chase out of this building. It’s the same thing she does when she says: I was just doing my job.
And, sure, she’s right about that first time, right to say that there was no motivation in a genuine caring for Isaac, that he really was just a paycheck. But this? This isn’t so innocent, this isn’t so devoid of concern. This isn’t so no strings attached, but Isaac lets her get away with it anyway, falls into humor and a joke of, “Find and then kill them. You gonna kill me?”
Braeden, it seems, is thinking the same thing as him, thinking about that day back in August of 2011, because she says, “Wasn’t my job to kill you the first time. Isn’t my job to kill you this time either.”
“But it is a job, huh?” Isaac says, though he knows it isn’t. “Who hired you? Derek?”
Braeden quickly loses her amusement in this little bit of theirs. She doesn’t give another joke, but she doesn’t dip into honesty either. She stays aloof in this moment. She could mention some concern or fear for Isaac and his well-being, but she doesn’t. Nor does she answer his questions, only poses one of her own instead. She asks, sternly, “What are you doing here?”
It’s Braeden, so Isaac could probably escape with an avoidance tactic of his own. Braeden is just kind enough that she wouldn’t force him to confess to her if he didn’t want to, but, regardless, he does sort of. Want to, that is.
So, he says, “I – I didn’t mean to come here.” Without thinking, Isaac’s hand finds the side of his ribs, the place where his tattoo lies, where Derek’s pack and Scott’s are tangled together for eternity. His thumb strokes over the spot, through his shirt and dulled, but gentle and reverent nonetheless. “This place, this day, Erica and Boyd – all of it just feels like, like.” Isaac doesn’t have the perfect word for it, manages only, “Unfinished?”
“Like an open wound?” Braeden guesses.
And Isaac nods, says, “Yeah.”
Braeden makes a face that’s almost sympathetic, followed by a quiet hum of noise, “Hm.” She tells him, “It’s probably always going to feel that way, but you already know that, don’t you? People like you, like me, like Derek – we know there’s no such thing as closure. It’s never going to feel finished,” she says, “but that’s not an excuse to move backwards. You have evolved so much since the first time I saved your life and that is a good thing. Don’t fuck it up for yourself.”
Isaac laughs a little, though he’s not sure why when none of this is funny. It’s just a sound, a release. And, eyes wet and stinging, he says, “You really do care about me, huh?”
“No,” Braeden says, fast in her denial, but she’s smiling at him like she does. Then, she adds, “C’mon, let’s get out of here. You need to get home before Scott loses his head worrying about you.”
And so, not for the first time, Braeden rescues Isaac from this building and from himself. She leads him out into the cooling evening air, and, not unlike Derek an hour ago, she stands on the sidewalk and she doesn’t leave until he does. She watches over him and ensures his safety, and, this time, it’s not a job at all. This time, Braeden is here because she knows him and Isaac knows her.
Isaac drives away from the street side and away from Braeden and away from the town of Beacon Hills. Isaac has moved from this setting, but he hasn’t run from it. He’s moved on, but he hasn’t abandoned his hometown completely. There are parts of this place that he can never leave behind, parts of this town that will live inside him forever, in the corner of his heart that feels like an open wound, the corner of his heart dedicated to Camden, to Erica, to Boyd, to Allison. To everyone lost and everyone he’s kept with him too.
To the girl who saved his life, who rescued him from this bank.