InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Call me Dr. Spin."

theprettybeta (theprettybeta) wrote in paradisolog,
@ 2016-04-15 00:17:00

Entry tags:

~isaac lahey (theprettybeta), ~lydia martin (eunoia)

WHO: Isaac Lahey and Lydia Martin
WHERE: Lydia's shelter
WHEN: Early Friday Morning
WHAT: Feels. Just accept that there's going to be a lot of feels.
WARNINGS: So many feels.
STATUS: Closed/Incomplete

I was left alone. Still, I waited for the day when she'd say "I will always love you."

It had been two years. Two full years for Isaac, and in those two years he spent every moment he had trying to concentrate on sifting through the complicated, complex emotions that he had originally ran away from. For two years, Isaac Lahey convinced himself that he was getting better, and last night that all fell apart in one fell swoop. Two years of denial unraveled into an explosive outburst, one that pushed away the only person who had ever shown him mercy who was still alive, and it was his own fault. Isaac shouldn't have bothered convincing himself that he was strong enough to move past what had happened to him. Perhaps he would have been able to go his entire life pretending, but he should have known the second he found out that Beacon Hills had followed him there that it was all going to fall apart. Maybe a part of him did know that, and he had just been waiting for the dam to break. It finally did, and with it came a flood of everything he had locked away. Anger, betrayal, guilt, fear, all of it was drowning him, and the worst part was that Isaac had no one to turn to.

He didn't know people here, and he was mostly afraid that unloading everything he felt would paint Allison out to be monster if he did it to anyone who didn't know her. He didn't want that. There were only a few people here who knew Allison, Stiles, Scott and Lydia, and none of them were ideal for Isaac to speak to. Scott for obvious reasons, Stiles because they never got along. And Lydia... she had gone through the same thing. She didn't need to relive it just because Isaac had to. He had tried to stay neutral in the little spat between her and Scott, they were both being hyper sensitive and Isaac, honestly, wanted nothing to do with any of it. But apparently that wasn't good enough, and now he wanted to make sure that Lydia was okay after Scott had started to bring up the past, again. She was pregnant. What the hell was he thinking, trying to upset her like that in her state?

So, Isaac wanted to check on her. He liked to think that Stiles would have taken care of Scott to make sure that he would stop putting Lydia down, at least publicly, but Isaac had a feeling that it was only wishful thinking. He reached her shelter just after sunrise, calling out quietly to avoid waking her if she was still asleep because he didn't want to stick his head in if she wasn't decent. "Lydia? I brought you something." More combs, now that she had found her shampoo, and a little more coconut oil just in case. "Are you awake?

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eunoia
2016-04-18 03:00 pm UTC (link)

It was Lydia's turn to be the one to offer the comforting gesture. Clearly, Isaac was torn about his decision and he carried a lot of guilt with him over the fact that he left, but Lydia didn't blame him anymore. After he had told her at the bonfire what had happened the night that Allison died, she couldn't blame him. Why would he want to stay? So she shook her head and lifted a hand to hold his jaw. "Isaac...it's not wrong to make a decision that you feel is best for you. I was mad at you. I'm not, anymore," she said, feeling that it was probably exceptionally important now to mention that. The last thing she wanted was for Isaac to continue to carry that guilt when she certainly didn't hold it against him knowing what she knew now about the way things had unfolded.

Her hand fell away from his face to take his hand and give it a reassuring squeeze. "Just because you still have feelings for the first woman you loved does not mean that you haven't made progress. Getting your GED and going to college, that's nothing to turn your nose up at, you know. Helping people, seeing other women...that's not being stagnant. It'll take a long time for your emotions to catch up with your drive to grow and change, that's just life. And you're not alone," she told him, "because honestly, if Aiden or even Jackson felt like an option for me again, I'd go back. Which, I know, would logically be taking steps back in my life, at this point, but I can't help the way I feel about them. Just like you can't help the way you felt — feel — about Allison."

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theprettybeta
2016-04-19 06:25 am UTC (link)

It felt like a shock went through him when Lydia touched his face because he hadn't expected it, such a gentle and benign brush of fingers from a woman who, in his eyes, was anything but. Perhaps that was why it was so hard to see Lydia cry, knowing that he played a part in that pain for her. Because Lydia was strong. She was one of the strongest women that he knew, powerless when it came to physical advantages and yet somehow so powerful in her own way. She was a survivor, and seeing her so broken, so tender, was almost unsettling. And yet, somehow, comforting. If Lydia could be broken, and raw, and human, then perhaps the guilt he carried along with the pain and the worthlessness he felt from his past didn't make him horrible, just as she said. Perhaps it made him human. Like her.

His head tilted into her hand a little, welcoming her touch, and he looked at her with a strange mixture of doubt and hope. He felt like it was wrong to make that decision. But god, did he want her to be right. The was one thing that was for certain, though; he felt a weight lift when she told him that she wasn't mad at him anymore. She should be, he though. She should have been mad at him because he had put her in a position that Isaac himself hated to be in, and he could have never forgiven those who put him there. But that was the difference between he and Lydia, he supposed. He was dragged down by the things that had happened to him in the past. Lydia was strong. Stronger.

"What if I can't do it?" His words came out in a rasp, as if scraping against his throat against the effort being made to keep them in. He looked down at her with something new, with a fearful uncertainty, but it didn't look as if it came out of nowhere. The expression hadn't necessarily changed on his face as much as it rose to the surface, because it wasn't a concept that Isaac hadn't thought about before. A wall had come down, and she was seeing something that was always there. It was just something he was usually better at hiding. "What if I can't move forward? I don't want to be like this anymore, Lydia." His lips pressed together tightly and his throat moved with a swallow, that shine in his eyes returning and this time Isaac didn't bother to push it down. He was scared. He was terrified.

"I don't want to feel like this anymore. I don't want to think about her every time I'm with a woman, I don't want to be kept awake at night because every time I close my eyes I see her face, I see her - I see her on the ground, I see her-" Isaac's hand moved to cover his mouth as if to physically silence himself before dragging down his face and dropping loosely. "I don't want to be trapped anymore. I don't want to miss her. I don't know what to do, I've tried, I've tried everything and I don't - nothing is working and I can't -"

His eyes closed as he inhaled deeply, his fingers now moving into his hair, and there was a slight tremble to them as he worked to contain himself. "And I feel like shit. I feel like I'm just insulting her, like I'm betraying her because I just don't want to think about it anymore, I don't want to see it anymore, I don't want to smell it anymore, I just don't, because some days I feel like I'm going to be okay but some days I feel like I'm just falling apart. And this was my last resort, this place, and it's not working. I don't know how to make it work. I don't know how to make it stop. I just want it to stop."

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eunoia
2016-04-19 04:52 pm UTC (link)

While they might not have been close at home and had really only talked when they were in the group or if they'd been paired as lab partners in class once upon a time, the compassion Lydia felt for him when she felt him lean into her hand and she saw that look in his eyes was very, very real. Someone like Isaac probably spent the better part of his life afraid of upsetting the people around him because when he'd upset his father, he'd been abused in response.

Everyone knew it and no one said anything and Lydia was just as guilty as Jackson had been, because she'd told herself it was none of her business when she'd climb into her car parked in front of Jackson's house and she'd hear the yelling only to note silently and piteously the next day at school that Isaac was sporting a shiner or a cast on his arm. She and her peers had collectively let Isaac Lahey suffer the shame, indignity, and pain of being abused for years and no one said a thing.

No wonder he was apprehensive of the idea of making a wrong decision; he'd been conditioned to be afraid to.

"You can," she encouraged. They all could. Everyone would take a different length of time to get there, she knew, and the fact that Stiles and Scott came from very shortly after Allison's death and seemed to have moved on without so much as a hiccup both here and at home while she and Isaac suffered in silence across the ocean and an entire continent from one another was proof of that. But eventually, they would all get there.

Lydia sucked in a quick breath as he began to unravel because she knew the feeling. She still had nightmares, too, and she hadn't even been there to see it. She'd seen Aiden's body and that was bad enough. Lydia took his wrists, guiding his hands back out of his hair when he made the stress response gesture. "Stop trying," she told him sagely and her eyes were swimming with tears again, but her expression was drawn with empathy and understanding. "Stop. Trying. The more you try to move on, the longer it's going to take," she explained. "You just have to let it happen in its own time, Isaac, and it will. It won't feel like this forever, it can't," she added and part of her was trying to reassure herself just as much as she was Isaac.

She let go of his wrists, took his hands and gave them an encouraging squeeze before letting go again entirely. "Stop trying to move on and just let it happen when it's time. It will. I can't imagine Allison ever wanting us to suffer and be miserable missing her forever or dwelling on it. She'd want us to move on and be happy, Isaac, you know that. You have to know that. Let yourself feel it. Let it hurt. Cry. Scream. Howl at the moon, if that's what you feel like doing when it hurts so much it makes you feel sick. You can't ever move on if you can't reach the acceptance stage of grief and you can't ever get to the acceptance stage if you don't let yourself mourn and go through the other stages. You have to feel it and you can't fight it. Let yourself feel it."

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theprettybeta
2016-04-20 05:26 am UTC (link)

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."

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eunoia
2016-04-21 03:04 pm UTC (link)

Lydia kept her eyes in Isaac's, because she thought if there was ever a time when it was important to look him in the eye when she spoke, it was right then. He needed to know that she meant it; he needed to know that she was really there and that he would have someone to take his hand and pull him back out of the darkness again, because Lydia was starting to realize that maybe Isaac had never had that person. The idea that maybe his relationships with the packs he'd run in had been largely superficial because he'd been conditioned to be afraid to feel anything was heartbreaking.

“Yes, you can,” she said firmly. “Yes you can, Isaac. You don't have to do it alone this time. Okay? You don't have to do it alone. If you feel like you need to wait, then wait,” she told him, her eyes never straying away from his, locked in on him to illustrate the weight she knew the words deserved to carry. “But when the babies are born, no more excuses. Yes, you can do it and I will help you. I won't let you be completely consumed with it, I promise...you will always have my hand to take to pull yourself back to your feet. You can do it. You can.”

What she was advising was asking a lot of Isaac, but she had done it and if she could, then so could he. And really, he deserved to be able to breathe again. That was the best way Lydia could describe the feeling. It still hurt and she still missed her best friend. There was still a void in her heart and she supposed there always would be, but she could breathe again. Isaac deserved to be able to, too.

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theprettybeta
2016-04-27 04:59 am UTC (link)

She spoke so firmly with such certainty that, for just a moment, Isaac almost believed her. He looked at her and had gone to look away, because that was what he was supposed to do, look away, avoid eye contact, but she was staring at him and holding him there. At first he wasn't sure if she was doing it on purpose, but she must have been, and that was how he knew she wanted him to hear her.

He opened his mouth to argue, because there were so many things that could have gone wrong and so many reasons why that wouldn't have worked, but for some reason in that moment Isaac couldn't think of a single one. She had meant it. He could tell by the way she was speaking to him that she had meant it, and Isaac had never had someone so invested in his well being before with no ulterior motive. Even Derek, who had saved him from his fathers wrath, had done so because he was trying to build his own pack, but Lydia had no reason to offer him help other than, apparently, wanting to. Because she understood. She was the only person in the world who could have understood.

So, instead, Isaac caved. He seemed a little stunned as he stared at her in disbelief, because he was stunned, and maybe that was why it was so hard for him to argue with her. She had caught him off guard.

"I'll try." It was all he could do. Isaac wasn't one to make promises he couldn't keep, but that one he could. "I don't - I'm not sure if I can actually do it, Lydia, but I'll try. Not now, but... after you and Malia have the babies. Then I can try. As long as I'm not alone."

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eunoia
2016-04-27 01:50 pm UTC (link)

Lydia gave him a small, encouraging smile. "Trying is a start," she replied, taking his hands and giving them what she hoped was a reassuring squeeze. "You won't be alone, I promise."

That was good enough for now. Isaac was still wavering, that much was clear, but if he was truly willing to try, that was good enough.

"Come on," she said finally. "Let's head back."

[ooc: wrap?]

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