MORTAL ✰ ISAAC LAHEY

[CHAPTER 36]

A SLEEPLESS NIGHT

ISAAC COULDN'T HELP but find the railroad car Derek Hale had offered him as his new hideaway constrictive at best—but he really had no control over it all because he was currently a fugitive evading the law and sneaking into hospital rooms to talk to pretty girls.

After being locked in a freezer for most of his life, he couldn't help but hate enclosed spaces and feeling caged up. Of course, he had to milk that trauma for all it's worth, but it had truly built up and bubbled in his chest until it had simply brewed over and splattered upon every other aspect of his life.

His anger had become unbearable—the very resonating anger within his father had come back to ruin his life bit by bit—and created problems within his newfound pack of two.

He couldn't stand the pitying looks thrown his way or the feigned care others pressed upon him once everything had changed.

Before all of this, no one had bothered to spare a second glance at him; no one had bothered to care—but now, everyone wanted to care because they felt bad for not doing so before.

Now that he was seen, no one actually saw him; they only saw what they wanted to see.

If anything, he was the next fad on the rumor-mill reduced to something less than human. He was an object—a glittering new toy that everyone wanted to play with, a thick and scrumptious piece of meat everyone wanted to tear into, a painting of all the things he dreaded most being placed on display to be poked and prodded, a gladiator in the ring with a price tag upon his head rather than a worth placed upon his soul—and it kept him tossing and turning in bed at the pretense of being anything but that.

How could he pretend that it didn't matter? How could he pretend that he didn't matter?

He was the son of a difficult man; he had learned lessons he shouldn't have been subjected to. He was the younger sibling of an overachieving brother who left nothing behind but pain; he had learned to forgive what he couldn't bring back and what he couldn't change. He was the boy no one spared a glance at; he had existed when he couldn't find a way to live.

If no one noticed, it still didn't mean that it wasn't anything but the truth; it didn't mean that it wasn't his truth.

It felt like a new shade of invisibility to be the only one able to see what he saw and to be the only one to believe what he believed.

And boy, did he absolutely loath it—and he had never loathed anything in his life, not even his father on drunken nights when loving his son had become too difficult and beating him was easier or his dreaded invisibility to the world until he found a way to feel less like a shadow and more of a ray of sunlight—because it was the one thing he couldn't masquerade behind and decide which version of the story to act out.

It was what felt real, and that was the agony of it all, because reality was what he wanted to avoid.

Reality was a void in his life that had always been filled with the abyss of his life—it had been filled with every moment of hate, injustice, and pain that had become weaved into his life. It was a fracture on an already broken pane of glass that couldn't withstand any excess pressure. It was what was shattering his heart and crushing his hope as soon as it came. It was what made him believe that love just didn't exist for everyone because some people were meant to be unlovable.

[PUBLISHED] JULY 29, 2017

there's probably errors because i don't proofread + no gif because i wrote chapters 35—38 on my phone while on an airplane and i don't feel like finding time to put gifs until i edit the story but, multiple updates !

&& when do i not write angst!! also i'm writing this on a plane 5 hours into a 12 hour ride with hella turbulence and i fear for my life!!

i can't wait for this lack of sleep, constantly jostling of my body, and depressing™ writing to all culminate in some small disaster in my life!!