His first response was to shake his head when she told him that he could, because he didn't believe it. Isaac couldn't move forward, he couldn't just allow himself to feel and accept the pain that was admitting to himself that he would never find her again. Isaac wasn't a man who accepted things, and not because he was arrogant or stubborn, but because he didn't know how. His life was doomed to cycles, there was no moving forward in the years that he spent at home because every single day was the same. He wandered around in a daze, a constant ache of pain always somewhere in his body, and when he got home it was either going to hurt, or he would be thrown into the darkness. And time didn't move in the dark. Everything stood still. The air was stale and thick, and after a while even his shallow breathing became a monotonous white noise in the background. There was no moving forward. There was only waiting.
His time with Derek was all a haze. Seeing the Alpha look down at him in that grave, one that he just wanted to stay in, it was like being seen for the first time. People didn't look Isaac in the eye before that. They saw bruises or casts and they looked away from him like he was some sort of diseased freak, like paying attention to him would give them bruises by association, and after Derek, that all changed. Isaac was powerful. He walked down the halls at the peak of his health, head held high and, for the first time in his life, without pain. He made heads turn. People wanted to be around him. He got into clubs, got girls numbers, it all happened so fast that it didn't feel like moving forward. For the first time in his life, Isaac felt like he was living in the now. And then Derek kicked him out, and he learned what it felt like to fall back. And then there was Allison.
It almost felt like moving forward with her. He felt like he had actually gotten somewhere, that he had started at the bottom and worked his way up until he somehow managed to wiggle his way into her heart, Allison was his progress. And then, all of the sudden, he wasn't. All of the sudden he was something different, something less important, and after she died everything stopped spinning. Everything stopped period. He felt stale, stuck in that moment of realization that she was gone, desperately trying to find a way to get her back, and the idea of just letting go and letting that crushing, heart tearing reality engulf him was too much to bear. Because he would be doing it alone. And Isaac didn't trust himself to come back from that. He looked at Lydia when she grabbed his wrists and spoke to him with a gently soothing tone, and all he wanted to do was try and do just that. But it was too big of a risk. "I can't," he said once more, and he shook his head to convey to her that he didn't mean it the way he had the first time. "Lydia... I won't come back. If I just let it hit me, if I just really let it hit me..."
His face twisted with a conflicted sort of anguish as he looked over her shoulder in the direction of Malia's den. "I have someone to take care of. She's pregnant, she needs me. She needs me. And my friend is pregnant," he gestured to her now, his eyes moving back. "I can't work towards acceptance when I have people to look after. When I have someone to take care of. I can't abandon someone when they need me and if I do this... I don't know how long it's going to take me." His voice got quiet with surrender, eyes moving up to the sky before back at her. "I don't know what will happen to me. But I know there are more important things going on right now than my feelings."