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He returns to the school after two months.
Back to his pack.
Back to Landon.
Back to Hope.
Not that she’s in any way the reason for his return. Landon is his brother, whatever Raf may have felt does not matter. But the school has become more of a home than he’d realized.
Everything is a little different, now. The monsters are still attacking, but the pack welcomes him back as Jed catches him up on the happenings and developments of the last weeks.
Landon hugs him and he moves back into their old room, almost as if nothing has changed.
The first time he sees her for more than a passing greeting is eleven days after his return. He’s been avoiding her, just a little, because he can’t quite escape the array of feelings that rush through him when he sees her.
But he can’t sleep, still haunted by the memories of his time as a wolf, and when he walks through the empty hallways, he finds her at a window, staring outside.
A crescent moon is hovering on the sky, the light illuminating her face and catching in her hair, and for a moment, he simply stands, captivated.
She turns around, cautious, before a quick smile crosses her face. “Raf,” she says, and his name sounds different dropping from her lips.
He should walk away, but instead, he steps closer, until they’re both looking out at the grounds.
“It’s late,” he comments.
She shrugs. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping, after Malivore.” There’s something nonchalant about the way she says it, like it doesn’t matter.
And he remembers clearly what it was like to be a wolf, lonely and alone in the woods, and he does not want to imagine what it must have been like to be stuck in the pits of hell for all that time.
And his promise to himself to stay away from her evaporates into the back of his mind as he steps closer to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. For a moment, they stand in stillness, and then she moves closer, her head dropping against his chest.
She leans into him, and he can hear her breathing slow down, as if she’s relaxing.
“How can I help?” he asks.
A beat passes, two. “Run with me?” she requests, looking out at the moon again, and when he looks down at her hands, he sees that she’s tugging her family ring off her finger.
She holds it out to him. “I know you said we couldn’t talk anymore, and I respect that, but - would you run with me, for a bit?”
He doesn’t say anything at first, just looks at her, auburn hair and tired eyes, standing in front of him, and sees a wolf separated from her pack, a girl who carries the weight of the world on her shoulders.
He holds out his hand and she places the ring into it.
That night, they run together for the first time.
They get undressed in separate corners of the library and when he meets her outside, she is a white wolf, brilliant and magnificent.
The grounds are theirs that night, and they run, faster and faster, chasing between trees and past the lake. For a moment, he sees their reflections, gliding over the water.
It’s almost dawn by the time she turns him back, averts her gaze as soon as she has.
“Thank you,” Landon tells him the next day, “for whatever you said to Hope. She seems better.”
“We just went running,” Raf says, and it sounds like an apology.
Landon shakes his head. “I’ve never had a problem with you hanging out with her, man.”
The words linger in his mind two nights later, when nightmares and shivers plague him and the school seems like an enclosing space, far too tight and far too loud, and he misses the the woods.
He moves quietly up the staircases to the top room, and knocks, just once.
She opens the door in a blue button up, a stark contrast to the red paint on her fingers, and he just stands there, because she looks breathtaking.
“Hi,” she smiles.
“I was wondering if I could borrow your ring,” he rushes out, and she looks out the window, at the night sky, where the crescent moon is now almost half-full.
She nods, quickly. “Can I come?” she asks, the ring already in her palm, held out to him.
“Yes,” he says, and from then on, they start running together.
Twice a week, three times a week, and in the remaining nights, the dreams plague him less and less, and during the day, the noises don’t make him flinch the same way anymore.
She’s better too, he can tell. Her smile is more frequent, and she moves through the school differently. A little less haunted.
He pays more attention to his pack. It’s - work. But it’s also oddly rewarding, making sure that his pack is safe, taken care of.
“You don’t have to do it all alone,” she says, one night, when they’re sitting on opposite ends of a little clearing.
They’ve started talking again, after their runs. Somehow, it doesn’t really feel like it counts, out here, in the middle of the night, and she knows things, about how to be a wolf, about how to run a pack, and he listens, and he learns. They talk about nightmares to sometimes, about the parents she lost, about the parents he found.
Under the moon, hidden by the trees, he finds something like peace, with her.
“Get some betas,” she adds, “ask Jed.”
He watches his pack in the next days, how they interact, who the natural leaders amongst them are.
Jed, definitely.
And one of the new wolves catches his eye. Maya.
He watches how the younger wolves flock to her, how the older ones look up to her.
“Can I ask you something?” he says, sitting down next to her at lunch.
“If you want to ask me out, you should know that we have a much too similar taste in women,” she replies, sends a pointed glance to Hope, across the room.
“I was going to ask you to be my beta, for the pack.”
Later, after she’s agreed, he can’t help the question that lingers. “How obvious am I?”
“Totally,” she replies, “but she’s utterly oblivious, so I think you’re good.”
He calls his Dad every week now, and they talk about wolves, and the pack, and about mundane things, like school, and Raf avoids to many questions about Malivore’s monsters, because that’s what kids do, maybe, try not to tell their parents how much danger they’re in.
But his dad promises to visit, soon, promises that he’s still looking for his mom, and that feels like family.
And he has Jef, and Maya, and the pack, and Landon, his crew, and Hope, something else entirely, here, and sometimes, it almost feels like his life is starting to fall back into place.
Sometimes, he still thinks about her, in ways he shouldn’t, the way he did before Josie restored their memories. Lingers on the way the sunlight catches in her hair, in the brilliance of her smile.
But for the most part, he tries to move on.
Focus on other things.
It’s nice, not being the only one in charge of the pack, not to carry the weight of all the responsibility on his own. They plan out the full moons, make sure that the grounds are safe.
“Tell your idiot brother to stay away,” Jed snipes, “I caught him wandering the grounds last week.”
Maya nods, sagely. “I better give you his phone number so you can tell him yourself,” behind Jed’s back, she smirks at Raf and he tries his best not to laugh as Jed agrees that that would be best. For the pack.
It’s an amazing full moon. The sky is clear, and the moon is full, and the pack runs through the woods at lightning speed, and he loves it.
But he can’t shake the feeling of someone missing, of the way the woods feel empty to him, without Hope there, and he can almost imagine her standing at her window, watching them run.
“Come with us, next month,” he suggests, a few days later.
“I have a pack,” she points out.
“In New Orleans.”
She hesitates. “I’m not asking you to join the pack,” he points out, “just come run with us.”
Finally, finally, she nods.
They run together, two dozen wolves, free under the night sky, Hope Mikaelson among them, and Raf feels whole, like his world is how it should be.
Landon leaves.
Raf isn’t surprised, not exactly. Landon has always had an easier time than he’s had leaving their temporary homes behind.
And he wants to find out more about Malivore, more about where he came from.
Raf offers to come with him, again and again, but Landon shakes his head. “You don’t have to. I need to do this on my own.”
“What about Hope?” Raf asks, because no matter what he may or may not feel for her, this is his brother, and he wants the people he loves to be happy.
“We haven’t been making each other happy in a long time,” Landon says. “Nothing’s really been the same, after she came back and I didn’t remember her.”
They hug each other, twice, and Landon promises to stay in touch, to let him know if he needs any help. Before he steps into the car, his brother grabs his wrist. “If someone ends up making you happy, Raf, I wouldn’t ever want you to walk away from that. Not because of me.”
He doesn’t know how to ask her how she is, just blurts out “are you okay?” in the middle of the woods one night, after their run.
“I will be,” she says.
They don’t say much more about Landon after that, mostly because he still a little angry at his brother for leaving, again.
Their newest Avengers mission lands them in the middle of Atlanta, on the trails of some errant member of Triad who may or may not have new information.
They’re standing in front of a Jazz bar. “We need to get inside,” she says, “I need eyes in there.”
“Otherwise the monster can just attack and we’ll be stuck out here,” she adds, and raises her hands. A moment later, he’s in a suit, she’s in a dress, and she’s holding out her arm to him.
He really doesn’t have a choice but to take it. He definitely doesn’t mind.
They go inside, and they dance, and god, he likes holding her in his arms. She’s tiny, he thinks, swirling her out and back in, and she looks deceptively harmless in her evening gown, but he’s not fooled.
Her pinned up hair and glittering smile hide a warrior like no other, someone who could destroy the entire room within seconds.
Not even five minutes after that thought, he watches her spin around, throw a knife straight at the monster before chasing after it. He watches, just for a moment, before taking off after her. Even Hope Mikaelson needs backup, on occasion.
He prepares his wolves for battle. They train in the courtyard, and in the gym, and Alaric makes it clear that he disapproves, but Raf won’t endanger his pack.
And with the way things are going, the next Triad, the next danger, they may be just around the corner.
So they spar and they fight and they practice.
“Feel like an actual challenge?” she asks, sliding up next to him, where he’s observing.
And he should be clever enough to deny her request, but he doesn’t, and that’s how they end up sparring in the gym. And it’s fun, fighting with her, her body, taut and strong, and it isn’t until she’s straddling him, a victorious smile on her face, that she seems to realise the position they’re in.
Her cheeks are flushed when she stands up, holding out her hand to him, and he knows why he shouldn’t fight with her, but the way she’s biting her lip leaves him feeling hopeful, even if he should know better.
They talk, a lot, now, about monsters and attacks and the pack. Most nights, out in the woods, it’s just the two of them.
Sometimes, they just walk, until they’ve reached what he thinks of as their clearing, and she’ll tell him about Malivore, about her mother, about her father.
He tells her about his childhood, because she never looks at him differently, and about being stuck for three months as a wolf.
The pack organises a party for his birthday, and it’s nothing formal, nothing big, and she shows up in jeans that look like they’ve been painted onto her skin and a black leather jacket, and god, she really is the most gorgeous human he’s ever seen.
He’s surrounded by people all night, and so is she, but their gazes occasionally meet across the room and her smile leaves him breathless every time.
Near the end of the night, when his betas have disappeared - he saw Maya flirting with Alyssa Chang and Jed left with Ethan half an hour ago, he’s sitting in a quiet corner of the room when she comes to join him.
She looks a little bit bashful, not exactly an expression he’s used to seeing from her, when she ends him a package.
It’s a painting. A sketch. Black and white, pencil on parchment, it shows them.
Her white wolf and his black one, running through the woods. She’s captured them in a way he didn’t think was possible, joyful and free.
“Thank you, Hope,” he says, “thank you,” and hopes that she understands, and by the smile on her face, he thinks she might. She throws her legs into his lap, leaning back against the wall, and entertains him with observations about the leaving guests.
Monsters attack, again and again, and he’s not immortal or invulnerable, so he was bound to get caught in the crosshairs sooner or later.
And he’s the alpha.
Protecting his pack comes naturally to him.
So, really, throwing himself in front of them is really the only logical conclusion. If that ends with him being tossed across the grounds by some kind of evil fairy queen, so be it.
He ends up in the infirmary, Emma promising that he’s going to be fine, and that he should stay overnight just to be safe. Jed clasps his shoulder, and Maya squeezes his arm, and the pack files out of the room.
His shoulder still kind of hurts, so sleep comes a little uneasy, and when he hears the door open, he sits up with a start. She’s wearing sweat pants and a shirt he thinks she might have stolen from him, and her hair is loosely fallen around her shoulders.
He’s seen her in the moonlight a thousand times, and every single time, she takes his breath away.
“It’s after curfew,” he says, as she walks over, sitting down on the edge of his bed.
“I need to break at least one week a rule,” she shrugs, “or I’d lose my edge.”
He chuckles, otherwise remaining silent as she looks up to meet his eyes. “You scared me,” she says.
“I’m fine,” he promises, and she nods.
“I know,” she replies, and places her hand on top his, and maybe his heart rate picks up a little, “but it made me realize some things.”
Hope Mikaelson kisses him in the middle of the night, in the empty rooms of the infirmary, and she tastes like home, like the woods, and like the moonlight.