The Only Asylum You Need Is My Heart: A Sterek One-Shot

Young Derek Hale sat alone in the eerily quiet hospital room. The walls were coated with a dull snowy white color and it was adorned with various items; they ranged from different drawings of a child-like quality, to letters with varying degrees of legibility. There was an assortment of vividly colored flowers on his bedside table with a small tag on one of the green stems. The print was too small for him to read, so he ignored the indecipherable text. He closely inspected the flowers. Most of them were brimming with vitality and others were bursting with vitality, same difference, but one of them caught his attention. There was a sad looking flower in the center of the vase. It looked like it was dying. The petals were slowly wilting and it had a certain dreary aura. Three knocks on the door interrupted his thoughts.

A small utter of "come in" pervaded his lips as his entire body tensed up. His apprehension quickly escalated when a man in white stepped in carrying a small clipboard.

"Hey Derek. How are you doing, buddy?"

"...f-f-fire..." He stammered. Inexplicable tears streaming down his face.

The doctor's smile quickly faded as soon as Derek mentioned the word. He shook his head as he frowned and jotted something down on his paper.

"Don't worry Derek. There is no fire here, see? Just us, just white. See?"

He gestured around the room and Derek's gaze wandered to wherever the man's finger sent and he seemed visibly relaxed.

"...yeah."

The doctor came closer and sat down in the chair next to his bed. The fond eyes meet his and he sent Derek a smile.

"So what do you want for breakfast?"

"...um, pancakes? With the small blueberries on top?" Derek's voice was barely louder than a whisper, but it was earnest.

The doctor chuckled and left without saying a word, that peculiar grin still plastered on his face. Derek, somewhat at ease now leaned back into the pile of pillows and stared into the indefinite whiteness of the ceiling. His mind quickly wandered again, like any boy of eleven.

And then after that the cycle continued. At first, his demeanor wasn't that bad, it was still manageable with the correct medications, but as time progressed, his condition gradually grew worse and worse, until it reached the point where he was out of control of his emotions. Doctors have tried reasoning with him, but his stubbornness has come a long way, and he doesn't say anything besides 'fire' and ask for pancakes with the small blueberries on top.

Some time has passed...

The doctor sat down in his office chair; his forehead crease becoming more prominent as another second passes. A passing nurse noticed this and stepped in the doorway.

"Hey, what's wrong?"

"It's Derek Hale."

His chilling expression darkened as he continued.

"It's been three months and he hasn't shown the slightest bit of progress. It seems like it is gradually getting worse."

"Is there nothing that you can do?" The nurse petitioned, her voice thick with concern for the small child.

"If we were able to do something, we would have done it already."

His voice was stern but soft at the same time.

"All we can do is hope."

The nurse nodded in agreement and quietly slipped out off the office, leaving the man in white alone in the room. He sighed deeply and swiveled in his chair to face the window. It seemed as if the leaves and flower petals were falling from the sky and onto the ground.