Isaac Lahey Imagines

Iced Out Mind (Part 2)

Isaac Lahey was not supposed to get this far. No, really, he wasn't.

The way he thought about it, the way he has always thought about it, Isaac was destined for an early grave. That's what it means to be anything but human, after all, to know that your life is on the line every single time you draw breath. Isaac always assumed that a hunter or other rival werewolf would get him at some point, so he never much bothered with making future plans. Why think about the life you could have if you know you'll never be able to stick around long enough to make it real?

So, when Isaac blinks one day and realizes that he's only a handful of years away from thirty, long out of high school and somewhat distant from his college graduation, he has to take a moment or two to steady himself. This is defying the odds to the max. Isaac was meant to die the second he received the bite, and yet somehow, he hasn't. How do you go about your normal life with a declaration like that?

It is enough to drive anyone a little mad, but fortunately, Isaac has a fairly good support system set up to keep him from losing it. He still stays in contact with the Beacon Hills clan, even if he doesn't see them all that often anymore. Most of Scott's pack still stays on the west coast, pretending they can escape that life just long enough to come spiraling back down when yet another attack happens.

Sometimes, Isaac wonders if he's unreasonably selfish to think that he should be the one to get to leave it all behind when everyone else has to stay there forever, trapped in that cycle of healing and hurting, protecting and dying, all in the same strains as before. Surely he is not be the one to deserve a release. Surely the free man should be Scott, whom the world owes everything, or Allison, who should have gotten the chance to live into her twenties, or any one of those friends who Isaac sees more often on a Christmas card than in real life.

Yet it's him nonetheless, him standing in an apartment in New York City and wondering how he got this lucky. Members of the pack come up every now and then, it's not like Isaac is totally cut off. They'll visit about once a year or so, every trip up the same. Some old friend stands on Isaac's streets and murmurs something about how wild the city is. They'll stay a few days then send themselves back down to exile in the hunter's land of Beacon Hills. Isaac always offers to keep them longer. At least here, they're mostly out of danger, but no one ever takes him up on it.

He's been able to shrug most of his survivor's guilt from his shoulders through the slow realization that all of his friends want the danger, in some way. They feel called to it. If they cannot protect others, how can they protect themselves? It may end in their early deaths, and for some, it already has, but they would choose that path over and over again anyway.

They're not the only ones to share in such a fate. Isaac turns and walks further into his apartment, where his eyes rest on another survivor. Y/N L/N, once a stranger he'd seen on the news and then a friend he'd wanted to keep more than any other, is now more to Isaac than he ever imagined possible. After that first meeting in a diner after Isaac had accidentally realized that she was Snowstorm, one of the Avengers, they kept crossing paths.

Soon enough, Isaac realized that he didn't ever want to go through another goodbye at the end of a wonderful date, that he wished they could have a world in which he connected one hour after another, an endless string of moments in which it was just the two of them. Nothing more, nothing less. He wanted her forever, even if Isaac's forevers tend to find themselves broken after a matter of years.

Nothing has happened to ruin them yet, however. Even daring to voice the thought in his head seems like a great temptation of fate to Isaac, but he stands by it anyway. Let this be a promise to a world that has only ever hurt him: Isaac chooses the good now, the happy ending. He will have what he wants, and that will be the love of his life. He can have his contented resolution with Y/N L/N, and there is absolutely nothing that can get in the way of that.