In Daylight, In Sunsets || howlinginhale
For as long as Rafe could remember, there'd been The Pull. Something inside of him ached to protect, though he wouldn't understand that until he was sent to live with his grandparents. It was a startling discovery. What or who was he supposed to protect? The Pull didn't clarify, and he'd been much too embarrassed to ask anyone - even his grandfather, who was as good as his confidant.
There would be no siblings (that he knew of) to protect. No friends (whom he could see as needing any sort of protection). So all he could do was name the urge and wait.
Without any direction in life, Rafe had stumbled through high school with okay grades and a budding relationship with Melissa. Melissa. He would always love her, though it was doubtful either of them would be in love with the other again. When they first began dating, he was so sure that he was meant to protect her. She meant so much to him after such a short time. Melissa proved him wrong within a week, and he loved her all the more for her strength, even though a part of him began to shift restlessly, unable to fulfill its duty.
Joining the Police Academy helped, to a degree. He made friends there, was given the means to protect, and, most importantly, something to protect - Beacon Hills. For the first time in his life, he felt full.
The feeling lasted until the night of the Hale fire. He and John were sitting at their desks doing paperwork of all things when the call came in, pulling many of the officers on duty to the scene. It was the first time he ever felt completely empty. Without even knowing it, Rafe had failed someone.
He'd always figured it was just the fact that such a horrible thing had managed to happen while he was on duty, and so his application was sent to the FBI in the hopes that he could impact more lives that way. In fact, many lives were saved in his time as an agent. Nothing, however, had come close to filling the hole in him.
Until he went back to Beacon Hills. He stopped by the last known residence of Derek Hale (who was intimately connected to at least two of the murder strings) and, for a moment, felt so empty that he wasn't sure he even existed. The feeling stopped as he finished knocking.
Oddly enough, he felt better. Just a tad.
