Broken Family Tree

15 - Healing, Part 2

Almost a month has passed since Thomas Hale came to Beacon Hills, three weeks to be exact, and he was living the best life he had ever known. His recovery was going smoother than Melissa or any of them had anticipated, naturally taken as a good sign. 

The medication he was given was helping him in ways he never knew were possible: he had more energy than he had felt in his whole life, leading him to start walking again and trying to sneak out in the middle of the night, becoming a flight risk and forcing Derek, Braeden, Malia and Peter to watch him throughout the night; he was sleeping so soundly that he hadn't woken up in the middle of the night from a nightmare for two weeks and counting, though his spiking energy levels were causing to wake up regardless, leading him to sneak into either Derek's or Peter's bed, since he moved in to be close to Thomas while Malia roomed with Ms. Martin and Lydia stayed with Stiles; and he was starting to seriously enjoy human food, having been given meat smoothies courtesy of Malia and Peter from fresh kill every other day before, at his insisting and to stop his midnight escape attempts, while Derek stayed behind and watched over him, reading to him and showing him pictures of animals to pass the time, but he was looking forward to human food more and more the longer he was exposed to it (it had been exactly eight days since he had asked for a hunted meal, which was the longest he had gone without raw meat, a small victory to the Hales as well as Melissa, who was concerned that the raw meat would only reduce his health and not reassured by Thomas when he explained that he would eat berries along with the meat as a "balancing point" so that his human and wolf would have their share of natural foods). 

What's more, his erratic moods were fluctuating less and less, stabilizing to singular moods of either happy, confused, focused, frustrated, or sad—though the last was rare. Only twice had he been sad, but when he had become this way, he had shifted only to the point where his fur would sprout throughout his entire body, proceeding to curl himself into a ball and not talking to anybody for hours. The first time it happened, no one knew what to do and spent the entire day trying to get him to talk to them. The next day, he avoided everyone's looks and questions and questioning looks, returning to near normal the day after. The second time it happened, the group was there, and they had no choice but to leave early, everything that happened the first time repeating itself. He refused to talk about it and would deliberately talk about anything else whenever it was brought up.

In spite of this, the small family was happy and proud of how Thomas was recovering and slowly acclimating to human life, learning about the alphabet, writing, colors, shapes, animals—kindergarten level stuff, but we all start somewhere, right? Except for math. Derek, Peter, and Malia were quick to raise the difficulty when they noticed the high level of his problem-solving skills, cruising through Algebra-level math as easily as if he was breathing. It was both fascinating and infuriating how blatantly obvious the difference of understanding between anything involving numbers and all other subjects was.

The others from the pack, except for Lydia who didn't feel up to it, had been coming around to the loft too—to talk to him and get to know him better. It was a week after their first talk that they came back, and everyone had decided they would all start by saying a little bit about themselves and what they were, creature-wise. They talked for three hours, the others introducing themselves and sitting on the couch and other chairs as they kept talking to Thomas, still bedridden at the time. He learned about a wide range of things that he never knew existed: sports, movies, desserts, games—childlike and adolescent alike—and the inner workings of school, a system where kids from the ages of four to eighteen would attend general education classes, take notes and be quizzed on a variety of subjects such as History, Science, English, Math—even Physical Education was a class, something that fascinated him. He wouldn't be able to actually attend since he was too old, dampening his mood, but they explained to him that there were kids who were also homeschooled, as in "taught at home," brightening his mood in a heartbeat. Not once did he look overwhelmed or ask to stop for a break, even when Stiles would go on a tangent from time to time. Amazingly, Thomas would never get lost whenever this happened and would know when to bring him back to the original topic, leaving everyone who had known the young man much longer speechless. They continued these visits, and it became part of their routine. Some wouldn't come all the time, but any conversations they had were never wasted.