Derek Hale Imagines

The One Who Leaves

The hardest part of both being a werewolf and knowing a werewolf is, and will always be, the horrors. The attacks that never cease, the blood always shed. The second hardest part is the strain of being with someone whose life is always in jeopardy purely because of who they are. Although it doesn't feel nearly as important as the constant threat of hunters, or the latest monster to decide that Beacon Hills should be its new domain, sometimes you swear the second part hangs even more heavily about your heart than the first. Then again, maybe that's just because of Derek Hale.

Derek is one of the most complicated players on the supernatural chess board. You met him what feels like a lifetime ago, when one of seemingly dozens of supernatural attacks had threatened the lives of Beacon Hills citizens. Derek had saved your life. A month later, you'd saved him from some hunters. The back-and-forth of life saving went on and on until the two of you decided you were better as friends than people a little too important to each other to be acquaintances, and then the boundaries were shifted again when you started dating.

Sometimes, though, on rough nights after long fights and darker ones when you haven't seen Derek in weeks and he doesn't seem all that inclined to answer your texts or voicemails, you start to think that entering into a relationship with you is one of Derek's biggest regrets. It's not that he doesn't care for you; Derek has assured you many times over that his feelings for you are stronger even than his loyalties to his pack, his commitment to killing the hunters responsible for the Hale House fire, yet the problem remains.

Derek is all too familiar with the struggle of having a weakness. When his ancestral home burned down with most of his family trapped inside, he learned for the first time that sometimes a mortal blow capable of destroying his life doesn't have to threaten him specifically. When he loves someone so much that he prioritizes their safety above his own, Derek creates a weakness that hunters and other supernaturals can exploit. He would never forgive himself if you were hurt as a tool to get to him, so Derek has been doing his best to limit the fallout of any supernatural fight onto you.

However, this only seems to drive the two of you apart. Yes, by not being seen in public as often anymore, Derek lowers the possibility that a hunter would try to kidnap you as a hostage, but it also means that you see him less and less frequently. When you do finally manage to meet up, after thoroughly checking to make sure you haven't been tailed, and only after dark in one of your houses, you're both exhausted, wrung dry of the same life and spirit that had brought the two of you together in the first place.

It's not the same anymore. You hate to admit it, but it's true. Loving Derek is no longer the beautiful victory it had always been. Instead, you feel as if you've lost the war. Derek isn't yours anymore. If he was, you wouldn't have to hide what the two of you share, you wouldn't have to constantly stare at the long list of missed calls on your phone and wonder when he'll ever pick up, if he even wants to anymore. Derek is doing a great job at keeping you safe, but somewhere along the line, the two of you got your priorities mixed up. Now you're alone and he's alive, and you don't know that you're any happier about it than you would have been if one of you were lost to the hunters.

At this point, why try? Why even bother with the pretense of maintaining the ruse? The two of you might as well not even be together at all. It doesn't feel like you are, certainly, when you go so long in between visits. Even when the two of you are finally face to face, Derek is harried and brief, hardly staying longer than a few hours before rushing off again, never to be seen for another few months.

It wears away at you like a river at a stone. Your sharp edges, the ones that pierced through his shell so easily at the beginning of it all, have been smoothed to nothingness. Each of your attempts to break through to Derek and coax him into staying even a little longer are brushed off with simple excuses. It's like you don't even exist to him anymore.