Unbroken ▹ Teen Wolf [02]

10; sucker punch

Everyone has regrets.

Even the most perfect, flawless human being in the world has at least one regret; it's what humans do. They're flawed beings that act irrationally without thinking, they make mistakes & then they regret them. The mistakes they make come in all shapes & sizes. Some are small, like a broken coffee mug. Some are easily fixed, like a typo. Some are forgivable mishaps that are forgotten hours later. Some, are none of the above.

The car crashes, the fires, the overdoses, all the accidental deaths. They're the irreversible mistakes, the ones that only take a second to make & stay with you forever. The ones that you can never take back or forget, no matter how hard to try. They're the mistakes that not only haunt you, but they become you— they make a home in your mind, and they never leave. They follow you everywhere, like a lost puppy & the moment they even suspect you're trying to forget them, they scream louder than you ever believed possible.

They replay in your mind like a broken record, the same short sequence of events over & over until your mistake is branded onto the darkness that greets you each time you close your eyes. Your mistake becomes a demon you can't exorcise, a scream you'll never be able to silence, and it leaves you forever questioning why you did it. It imprints itself in your mind until you know by heart every last thing you could have done to prevent its existence, and it taunts you with them.

It shows you all the possible outcomes. It's your own personal demon, and like any creature of darkness, it loves to make your pain worse. It creates scenarios in which you were able to solve the problem without tragedy, scenarios in which it doesn't exist. It shows you what you could've had, and then it lights it on fire right in front of you. It consumes all light & leaves you in the dark, it weighs you down & it becomes a monster; one that will never let you go.

That is, if you let it.

Rachel refused to let her guilt become a monster, just as she refused to let herself become one. She made a mistake. She wished more than anything that she could go back & change things, that she could make things right. But unlike the future, she knew the past was carved in stone— it wasn't something she could remodel to her satisfaction. Rachel had regrets, but she couldn't afford to let them control her.

She couldn't afford to believe that Derek was dead.

Even though everyone around her was certain of it, Rachel couldn't be. Even though she felt like someone had torn out her heart, she couldn't accept that her only brother was dead. She couldn't accept that the last thing she said to him was that she was leaving, & not that she loved him. She couldn't accept that she would never see him again, that he'd never again be there to tell her what to do when she was unsure of herself. She couldn't accept it, because the minute she did, she knew she would break.

Rachel had already watched her brother supposedly die once before, and been with him through an abundance of almost-deaths. She refused to accept that she had finally witnessed his real death— Rachel could take a lot, she made sure of it. She was strong, sometimes too strong for her own good, but she knew accepting that she'd lost the one person who's been with her from the start would be enough to destroy everything. The minute she let herself believe he was truly gone, she would be, too.

"Rae?" The voice interrupted her thoughts, temporarily stopping the incipient evolution of her regret.

For the first time in an hour she finally looked away from the dull grey bus seat in front of her. Isaac was staring at her, still looking as worried as ever— she could tell he wanted to ask if she was okay, but was thankful he didn't. She wasn't okay, and she was afraid if she acknowledged that she'd lose the last bit of hope she had.