The first part of the trial is a massive blur. The arresting officers testify, Jackson takes the stand, and Isaac doesn't take in any of it. His vision is blurry, his hands are shaking, the tie around his neck feels as though it's choking him, and time is crawling by.
He isn't really aware of any of his surroundings, he's just stuck in his own head. His father is there. Right there. That's all that he's aware of, and as each moment crawls by, he's one moment closer to the time when his father will be able to get at him again, to ask him questions, to put him through the ringer for what will hopefully be for the last time.
And then his name is called.
At first, he doesn't hear it, and it has to be said a second time before he realizes that it's his turn. That it's his testimony. He's last, and that was intentional, but that also means that the last part of this whole trial, save for closing arguments, will be his father questioning him, and he just hopes that he can get through.
"Sweetie, you're going to be fine," Clara says as he shakily walks past her.
He feels like he's going to pass out as he takes the stand, and is sworn in. He's going to tell the truth, and that's what's so blindingly terrifying to him right now.
He doesn't like the truth, not this truth.
This truth is every bad memory that he's ever had, the source of almost every bad dream he's ever had, and here he is, in a too-bright courtroom, in front of too many strangers, and the one person he fears most in the world, about to relive every awful detail of it.
"Alright, Isaac." Mr. Whittemore is right there, and this part? This part he's gone over ten thousand times, in his head, with Mr. Whittemore, with Clara, even once with Mr. Stilinski, though Stiles wasn't there. This part he's got down.
That doesn't make it easy.
"Can you please give the court an overview of your relationship with your father?"
Isaac takes a deep breath, and shakily, begins to answer.
He talks about how it used to be alright, how his family used to be close, and loving, and how one by one, the people that he loved disappeared from his life, his mother and brother through their tragic and untimely deaths, and his father, indirectly through those deaths.
He talks about the first time his father hit him, when he was 11 years old and brought him a failing grade from a 6th grade math test. His brother had only just died, and Isaac was still trying to find his bearings, just a kid, reeling from the loss of both his mother and his brother in such close succession, and his father? Well, he turned to something else to cope, and that something else was beating on his son for failures.
He talks about how he kept telling himself that his father was just grieving, that it would all pass, about how he convinced himself of that at first, when the beatings were mild, few, and far between, and how by the time he realized that it wasn't changing, he was too afraid of his father to do anything about it.
And then there's the freezer. He talks about how when he was 13, the freezer in their house broke, and rather than throw it out, his father moved it to the basement, used it as the ultimate punishment for Isaac, locking him inside of it for hours at a time.
He's crying by the time he's done talking about the way his father kept him from saying anything, kept him too scared and submissive to believe that anyone would believe a word that he had to say over his father.
"Alright, Isaac," Mr. Whittemore says after he's read off the last of his questions. "That's all that I have for you." He gives him a nod, and Isaac knows that it's supposed to be reassuring, but he's terrified.
What he's been dreading since he found out about this is about to happen. His father gets to question him. Every fiber of his being is terrified.
He can't look in the direction of his father, but out of the corner of his eye, he sees the man rise, sees him advance towards the stand, and every part of Isaac shrinks back, but there's nowhere to run. The booth he's in is small, and he can't run away from this, not without collapsing everything he's been working towards.
His father approaches, as close as he can get without anyone stopping him, Isaac guesses, and looks right at Isaac, who looks at the ground.
"You're lying," his father says.
For a moment, silence...silence in so much as no one says anything, but Isaac can hear his own heart beating, and it's fast, too fast - exploding out of his chest from nerves, from fear, kind of fast. He feels like he's going to throw up, like he's going to pass out, like this is it the end of the line.
He feels as though his father is literally scaring him to death, and no rational part of him can convince him otherwise.
Except if he dies right now, right here on the stand, his father wins, and that is what gets through to him. It's not the utterly ridiculous notion that his father being there could actually frighten him to the grave, it's knowing that if he did, the man who tortured him for years would win. This whole day is about making sure that Mr. Lahey doesn't win, and Isaac is the last piece of that puzzle.
"I-I'm not." He manages to choke the words out.
"Of course you are," his father says easily, and there it is - that smooth voice, that confidence, that tone. He always had a way with words, a way with speaking that could make anyone believe him. Hell, he convinced his own son that all of the pain he endured was his own fault.
What made Isaac think that he couldn't do the same thing with this jury?
"Why would I hit my son?"
"I-I don't know," Isaac whispers, because that's the truth. He doesn't know.
To this day, Isaac doesn't know what he did to bring on the pain, the trauma.
"I don't know what I did to make you hate me so much," he states. And those words, saying them out loud, they give him a kind of power that he's never felt before. He looks up, and maybe he's not making eye contact with his father, but he's not staring at the floor now.
He's still terrified, still shaking, his voice is still soft, still weak, still stunted with fear, but he's not backing down.
"I don't hate you, Isaac," he states. "I'm just disappointed in you. "You have good genes, a good brain, a good body, and yet you blundered your way through school, you can't get off the bench in lacrosse, you-"
"OBJECTION!" Mr. Whittemore's voice rings through the courtroom so loudly and quickly that it forces Isaac to jump in his seat, his heartbeat escalating even more. "Badgering the witness."
"Sustained." The judge nods. "Mr. Lahey, please find your point?"
It's clear the judge has had enough of Mr. Lahey's tricks, but even Isaac is having trouble seeing that. He's having trouble with all of this, because once again, that doubt is rising in him. What if this all really is his fault? He should have worked harder, he should have done better, been better.
"Now Isaac," his father says, and there's that voice again, smooth, calm, as though his freedom doesn't depend on convincing everyone he didn't beat his child, when he very clearly did. "If I were, as you say, abusing you for so long, why did you never tell anyone?"
And that's the question, isn't it? Why didn't he come forwards? There were years spent in misery at the hands of his father, years where he could have said something, and didn't.
"I…I didn't...I…" Isaac gulps, stumbling over the answer. "I...I…"
"Well?" His father looks unimpressed, and Isaac glances away from the man, his eyes scanning the courtroom.
It's sparse, there aren't many people there at all, and his eyes fix on the three people that are there for him, and exclusively for him.
First, there's Clara. His aunt, the woman taking care of him. She's helping him through everything that he's going through, and maybe she didn't ask for this, and she may not biologically be his mother, but she's the most warm, caring, and familial person that he's had in his life for years. She's not looking at him, but he guesses that she's having a hard time hearing this.
Then there's Dr. Jacobsen. He's sitting there, looking calm as ever, and when Isaac catches his eye, he gives him a nod of solidarity. He doesn't want to throw Isaac off, and honestly, Isaac is just looking at him as an anchor right now, that's what he's there for, after all.
And then there's Stiles. Stiles, who doesn't have to be there at all. Stiles, who looks about as uncomfortable as possible, and is still there. He could have left, he could have run, and maybe he looks uncomfortable, but he's still there. He's not leaving, because he's there for Isaac, because he cares.
These are the people that should matter. The ones that are there for him. They are the ones giving him strength, and after this is over, and he's shaking so badly that he can't stand on his own, they will be the ones holding him up.
"You didn't give me the chance," he states. "You bullied me, you hit me, you dragged me down flights of stairs, locked me in the freezer, threw things at me, kept me from having any semblance of a normal childhood because you weren't happy with the way that your life was going. You aren't the only one who lost them, you know!" Isaac's heart is racing, his voice growing louder. "I lost them too, mom, Cam? You think their deaths weren't painful enough for me? I didn't want to lose you, too!" He gulps, shaking, and he knows he should stop, that someone should be interrupting him, but everything is still, everyone is frozen, so he doesn't stop.
Isaac looks up, facing his father down, and staring him right in the eye.
"I didn't tell anyone because I was clinging to some ghost of a hope that someday, somehow, you and I might be a family again, that you would stop taking everything you were feeling out on me, and realize that we were all each other had, but you didn't. You just kept going, and I lost my will, my nerve, my spine - you took that all away from me. I couldn't tell anyone, because you had me so scared I could barely force myself to get out of bed in the morning."
And they're back, the tears. They're stinging at his eyes, begging to be released, and Isaac doesn't have the strength to keep them at bay. He sniffles, looking away from his father again, looking down. He doesn't have the energy to look for the familiar faces, doesn't have the energy to draw strength from them a second time, but he did once.
He stood up to his father, and that's what counts.
"So you're saying," his father says. "That you lied. You lied to teachers, classmates, coaches, about bruises, bumps, scrapes, scratches, all because you hoped we could be a family again if you didn't tell on me?"
"I…" Isaac gulps, his voice shaky from the tears. "I just wanted you to love me." He directs the words at the ground, soft, low, inaudible, had it not been for the microphone.
Isaac's father leans forwards, closer than Isaac is comfortable with, and speaks into the mic himself.
"If you wanted me to love you, then you should have been better."
"OBJECTION!"
"Withdrawn," Mr. Lahey says with a smirk.
"Is that all, Mr. Lahey?" The judge asks, looking at Isaac's father with a dangerous glare, and it's clear that she will be sparing this man nothing.
"Yes, I'm finished." He smirks at Isaac, but Isaac just looks away.
That's it. He's done.
Just like the first part of the trial is a blur, so is the rest of it.
Once he's down from the stand, he collapses into his aunt's arms, shaking, crying, and not a single bit of that is an act. He can barely sit up, and Clara holds him tight, close. He's so shaken that he almost doesn't feel Stiles' hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently, a small showing over caring, without intruding into his space too much. It's there, he knows it is, and he is nowhere near being able to find the words, but it matters to him.
Closing remarks are made, but Isaac doesn't hear them, and the jury is excused to deliberate, but it takes barely any time at all, and they're back in the courtroom, handing down sentencing.
His father is going away. For a long time, a very long time, and if and when he does get out of jail, well, he's not allowed near Isaac ever again, and that's all that Isaac wants, to be free of that man.
"C-can we go?" he asks, looking to Clara once the excuse them from the courtroom.
"Of course we can." She puts her arm around him, heading away down the aisle.
Isaac doesn't watch as his father is taken away. He doesn't want to see it. He doesn't want to see that man ever again.
All that he wanted was love, caring, a family, and he has that now. He has his Aunt, he has Stiles, and the boys at school, the lacrosse team, that stood by him? He has them. He may still be reeling from everything, but that hold his father had over him? It's so weak now that it's almost entirely gone.
It's over, Isaac thinks to himself as he walks out of the courtroom with his aunt, Stiles and Dr. Jacobsen somewhere behind them.
It's finally over.
A/N FIRST OFF! I don't actually know how court proceedings are for situations like this, and while I'm pretty sure this isn't actually how they worked...it was really the only way I could see for Isaac to not only face his demons, but for Stiles to hear his full story - I don't think Isaac ever would have told him all of it.
That being said, I hope you guys liked this chapter well enough. It was tough to write, and I know that I sort of glossed over part of it, but...itwasmakingmesad.
Thanks for reading!