Isaac had never enjoyed the cold. The cold was where minutes stretched to hours, hours stretched to days creating an eternity. The cold was where trembles were violent and terrifying, where shaking was a never-ending reality. Of course, Isaac quite disliked that reality. And the cold. It hadn't always been that way; Isaac could remember asking his father how cold it was during winter as a young child. He'd wanted snow. Snow, Isaac had reasoned, was how Santa stayed on the roofs and what made Christmas magical. Of course, good things ended. Just like always. He'd gone from begging for the cold winter nights to fearing them like most feared public speaking.
Strange; Isaac loved public speaking as a little kid. The words rolling off his tongue had always felt so natural, so part of him. But just like his love of the cold, that was whisked away along with everything else good in his life. Dead. It wasn't exactly a foreign concept to Isaac. He'd been given death threats far too often for a sixteen year old. But alas, she was dead. Agnes Lahey was dead. And that changed everything; it changed the cold winter nights and the long, winding speeches. It changed the once sweet personality and the once gentle pillow fights. In the moment that the doctors pronounced her dead, he changed. They both changed.
Change; change is good, Rafiki had said. Yet not this time. Change was always supposed to be for the better of everyone but that simply wasn't how life worked. Things didn't get better with a death, they got worse. The cold became terrifying rather than soothing, the speaking an unfortunate necessity rather than a treat. But the attitudes were the worst. The pitying glances shot Isaac's way, the murderous glares from his mother's friends. But what could he have done? It's not like Isaac had killed his mother. Agnes had died from cancer, becoming just another statistic on a long page of faceless names. And that certainly wasn't a good change. Nothing was a good change.
Nothingness, on the other hand, was quite good. In the comforting caress of nothingness, Isaac was numb to the pain wrought from being shoved down the long steps and kicked into the cold darkness. When he'd finally be done, pass out and expect to die, he could be relaxed for once in his life. The lack of all senses soothed him from understanding what was happening. Sensory deprivation. It wasn't true sensory deprivation of course; no, that was something out of a sci-fi movie or book. But this came close, the chill holding him tight and unconsciousness burrowing into his mind. He couldn't feel the nasty black eye or the cuts to his hands or the bruises up his arms and legs. And that was always a good thing. Pain became fleeting in nothing.
Fleeting. Ephemeral. Something that didn't last. Of course, nothing was ephemeral as well. At the end of what felt like years of imprisonment but was just a single cold night, Isaac would be awaken by his 'smiling and gentle' father telling him it was almost time for school. Or for lacrosse practice or whatever. And all the pain would come flooding back and he would hate himself for not having died of cold or of pain or of something. He just wanted to die when the agony became too much. When that time came, he'd always just figured that he would die without a thought of a care in the world. That he'd be happy to be gone from the agony that was the only existence in the Lahey home. He hated his own life.
Hate was a strong word, but wasn't love as well? It was just the negative meaning that made hate bad and love good. In all honesty, they were the extremes of two scales, the difference between a mouse and an elephant. Isaac loved his mother, he knew that. But he'd also loved his father. And then overnight, the entire world changed. Love turned to hate both ways, the elephants balancing each other out and breaking the scales. He hated his mom for leaving him and hated his dad for hating him. Which was all very confusing but it did make sense to Isaac. And then he'd met Derek Hale after practice on a chilly winter's night. He'd asked why Isaac put up with it all and if he wanted it to change. Issac had looked up, replying that he had only ever known change to be for the worse. But if things would get better, he'd accept anything.
And the world changed. Possibly for the better, possibly for the worse. Isaac spoke to Scott McCall and then learned his father had been mysteriously killed. He began to understand the true meaning of supernatural. And he enjoyed it. He didn't mind it when Derek would ask for a spot of help with something of when the Doubles S's (as Scott McCall and Stiles Stilinski were called) would drag him off on some insane adventure through the school. For the first time in his life, everything had changed for the better and become so much better. Even the ferocious lizard couldn't have changed that. Isaac had friends in the form of Erica, Boyd (who's first name was Vernon), Scott and Stiles. They were family.
Until it became full out war with the alphas but by then, Isaac understood. They weren't family if you feared them. Even the twins became family with that. The twins and Danny and Lydia and Allison all joined their pack but even with their camaraderie, Isaac would always miss his first family, the one that had changed for the worse.
Ethan and Danny, Aiden and Lydia, Boyd and Erica both gone from the world, Scott and Stiles and Derek in their lonesome, Cora and Isaac single as well. They were one weird and messed up and crazy family but that never changed a thing. Family comes first.