Disclaimer – Big surprise, I know, but I don't own anything. Unless I end up creating some OC's which may or may not happened depending on how I feel but if so I do own them…
Summary – In a small, run down house in the town of Beacon Hills lives a boy who is only human. A boy who has lost everything he ever loved. His mother. His brother. His father. No, his father wasn't dead but he certainly wasn't the same man he had once been. A boy who was in the right place at the right time and managed not only to save a life but to finally make some real friends and, you know, save the whole town. His name? Isaac. Isaac Lahey.
Things you need to know about this ALTERNATE UNIVERSE/CANON-DIVERGENT UNIVERSE I've created for the purposes of this story – Isaac is still human; Derek never turned him in Season Two, he just turned Erica and Boyd. Mr Lahey is still alive; the Pack managed to stop Matt before he was able to force Jackson/the Kanima to kill the former swimming coach.
Warnings (will add more as required) – Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-Typical Language, Alternate Universe/Canon-Divergence, Child Abuse, Medical Inaccuracies
~ Only Human ~
~ Prologue ~
Why?
Why had he argued?
He should've known by now that his father would go easier on him if he just admitted his failures, if he just bowed his head and apologised for whatever it was he had or hadn't done so why had he tried to defend his pathetic test results? Why had he felt the need to point out that his results were higher than they had been all semester? That he was improving?
Why?
Instead of merely being dragged down into the basement his father had thrown him down the stairs, delivering a brutal kick to his back to really send him tumbling. His body had tucked itself into a roll automatically in an instinctive attempt to protect himself from the fall but one of his arms had still managed to end up twisted underneath him when he had hit the ground, resulting the familiar feeling of a bone bring broken accompanying the pain.
Why hadn't he just taken the dressing down, the beating and imprisonment in the freezer?
He'd still ended up in the freezer, cradling his broken arm against his chest for the couple of hours that he lay trembling inside his own personal embodiment of hell until his father had finally returned to the basement and freed him, unlocking the padlock but leaving the freezer shut as he stumbled back up to the couch where his eighth beer was waiting for him.
After so many years of living with his fathers abuse Isaac had become quite adept at treating his injuries but normally they were just cuts and bruises, sometimes welts or burns. He'd broken more of Isaac's bones back when it had all startled following the deaths of his mother and older brother but when the hospital had begun to suspect an underlying reason that didn't match up with the "he's a clumsy kid" excuse his dad had used he'd introduced the freezer as a "suitable replacement" for the broken bones the teenager had suffered.
Pushing open the lid of the freezer, mercifully unplugged or he'd had had to contend with frostbite and hypothermia for years, he pulled himself up with his good arm and all but rolled out of the storage unit, whimpering softly as his entire body screamed in agony.
The hand attached to his broken arm was turning a rather alarming purple colour…
Ascending the stairs he emerged in the kitchen, pausing to lean against the wall for a moment as a wave of dizziness threatened to overcome him, before moving towards the front door of the run down house he had been all but trapped in for the last five years.
"I'm…I'm going to the hospital for my arm, dad," he called out shakily as he unlocked the three separate locks attached to the front door. "I'll tell them I fell down the stairs…"
Escaping the house before his father could respond he stumbled out onto the road, pulling his light jacket around him as tightly as he could with one working hand in order to combat the chill in the night air, and set off in the direction of Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital.
It didn't take him long to make the relatively simple walk despite the slight limp which had set in about halfway there thanks to the persistent ache growing in his left thigh, warning him that there would be one hell of a bruise come the following morning. Given the late hour he'd extend the hospital to be relatively quiet but as he stepped into the car park he saw that he was mistaken but not for any reason which he would have expected – a thick electricity cable had come loose from somewhere and had fallen down in front of an ambulance which had evidently been heading from the main entrance to the hospital.
He watched, horrified, as the vehicle swerved and struck a fire hydrant sending water flooding out into the parking lot just as the wildly sparking end of the cable hit the ground.
"Oh, God…"
Countless voices screamed as the ambulance driver stumbled out of his damaged vehicle only to be electrocuted as soon as his feet touched the water, falling to the ground with an uncontrollable shriek of pain. Isaac was distracted from the poor woman who suffered the same fate after stepping out of her car into the growing pool of electrified water when he saw a vaguely familiar girl standing a couple of paces away from him, too stunned to move.
"No!"
His voice sounded foreign even to his own ears as he hurried across to where she was stood, pushing her with every bit of strength he possessed in order to throw her onto the raised patch of grass surrounding the car park just as the deadly water reached the point where her feet had been resting. Unfortunately there was nothing her could do to save himself.
A wave of pain unlike any other overwhelmed his senses, his body seizing up uncontrollably as the electricity coursed through his body. Blackness began creeping in at the edge of his vision just as his twitching body slumped forwards, the pain only increasing as more of him including the bare skin of his face and neck came into contact with the electrocuted water.
The last thing he saw before the darkness overcame him was the horrified expression on the girls face as she called out for someone to help him…
A/N – I shouldn't be writing this. I've got too many stories on the go already but this idea literally wouldn't leave me alone ever since it watched the episode in question during my binge watching of the show which I only recently discovered. (I know, in so late the party it's ridiculous but never mind, I'm here now.) I haven't as of yet decided what pairing to include in this canon-divergent universe I've created so suggestions are more than welcome. X