Chapter Text
Magic, if done often enough or with enough strength, has a sort of imprint that hangs around. It’s not an exact science by any means, just a sort of feeling that you get if you look into it hard enough. Keelin was the first one to properly explain the concept to her, after that morning scare with Freya. After that, she got in the habit of seeking out the magical auras of people or places, just to feel what it was like. To get that rush of recognition, a new feeling every time.
Aunt Freya’s magic is a tall, ancient forest, with unspeakable viking myths around every corner, the smell of open air and fresh pine, the threat of snow always on the horizon.
Davina’s magic was bright, airy, like falling off of a New York City skyscraper, but having no fear of hitting the ground.
Lizzie Saltzman’s magic had a sort of bitter taste to it, like it never forgot that it was stolen, borrowed, reshaped, and reformed.
Josie’s magic, on the other hand, was bold and felt like old knowledge come to life again.
Malivore has no magical aura. It’s a distinctly medium space. It’s not too cold or too warm, not comfortable but not uncomfortable. It feels a little bit like a hospital.
In short, it fucking sucks.
Being in Malivore might be the shittiest thing ever, tied only with getting barfed out of Malivore.
One moment she’s in darkness, telling Clarke to shut the fuck up already! My god, you’re making hell more unbearable than it needs to be and the next she’s laying in a field in Georgia, bright sunlight shining down on her.
She’s picked up by a kind old man and his daughter in a pickup truck. They take her as far as a truck stop in Charlotte and she promises that she’s meeting her dad there soon.
She calls the Salvatore School, because that’s the only number she can remember and the phone is picked up by Lizzie Saltzman, of all people.
“Thanks for calling the Salvatore School, how can I help you?” She answers, only sounding slightly bored.
Hope smiles a little bit over the phone because it’s so good to hear a friendly voice, even if it is the superficial mask Lizzie puts on for most of the world.
“Lizzie, hey, is Dr. Saltzman available?”
“I- I didn’t tell you my name. Care to tell me yours?”
“Hope.”
There’s silence on the line for so long that Hope thinks Lizzie might have hung up on her.
“You going by Marshall or Mikaelson this time around?”
She nearly cries from happiness as she faintly hears Lizzie ask for her location.
“Uh Charlotte, the…” she trails off as she looks out the window to see the actual name of the place she’s at. “I don’t actually know the name of the place. I’m sorry, if you give me literally three seconds I can grab it but there’s somebody else waiting for this phone and I don’t have any money on me, so I only have this one call.”
“Hope?”
“Yes?”
“Shut up”
“I- What?”
“I’m trying to track you but your inability to shut up when you’re nervous, however cute it may be, is incredibly distracting.”
Hope falls silent, her mind running a mile a minute. However cute it may be, she called you cute, she thinks the thing you do is cute, she remembers you, how does she remember you?
“Lizzie?”
There’s no verbal response, just a slight hum of acknowledgement from Lizzie.
“How do you remember me? I jumped into a pit whose only job was to erase memories.”
“Malivore erases things from existing as fact, but you were still there, so it made clear memories seem like a dream. Some things can’t be erased, like photos, videos, or diaries. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together. Welcome to the post-digital age, Hope Mikaelson.”
Something about that statement strikes her as odd, but she files it away for later and shrugs.
“Perfect.”
Lizzie’s voice startles her when it comes back. “I’ve got your location down, Dad’s taking the emergency phone and coming to get you. Do you need anything else or should I leave you to pass the next eight hours at a truck stop in peace?”
“I…” Hope glances around the nearly empty truck stop. “I think I’ll be fine, just bored.”
“So steal a phone, call me back.”
“What?”
“Buy one, steal one, same difference really.”
“You’re a bad influence on me, Lizzie Saltzman.”
From the other end of the line Lizzie scoffs and Hope can hear as she leans away from the mouthpiece to talk to somebody else before returning. “Well, if you decide to become the rebel that you try to make everyone think you are, call me back okay? I’ll be working the office the rest of the day and lord knows you’re bound to be the most entertaining thing to happen.”
“That’s almost a compliment, Saltzman.”
“Don’t hold your breath for another one, Mikaelson.”
Hope hangs up the phone and hangs out around the truck stop for a while. It’s not so bad really. She buys a hot dog, reads a birding guide to North Carolina, twice. When she looks at the clock after what she thinks is an hour, she finds that only 30 minutes have passed.
She ends up buying a phone.
They talk for six hours about anything and everything. Saying “they talk” is generous, mainly it’s Lizzie talking, filling Hope in on everything that happened in the four months she was in Malivore.
“There was an accident in the forest over summer break, Dorian almost died.”
“Is he okay?”
“Well, he’s a vampire now so he did literally die .”
“You probably should’ve led with that.”
“Penelope Park came back,” a pause as Lizzie seems to spit out the word,“finally.”
“I bet Josie’s happy about that”
“I… I think I’m happy too, if it makes Josie happy.”
“That’s almost emotionally mature of you, I’m very impressed.”
“Okay my dad just texted me, he should be there within the hour.”
“Thank god, I’m so ready to be out of North Carolina.”
“I’ve actually always wanted to visit.”
“I’ll bring you back someday.”
“That sounds dangerously like you actually want to hang out with me, Mikaelson.”
“Maybe I do, Saltzman.”
Reconnecting with Alaric is a little awkward, but the hug he sweeps Hope into feels like coming home. It feels like she made the right choice in jumping into Malivore to save everyone. Even if she only bought them time, and how much, she isn’t sure, but even if they are just living on borrowed time until the next big catastrophe, maybe more time spent on the phone with girls who called her cute and whose magic tingles her senses is time well spent.
The first person to approach her when they return to the Salvatore School is MG. Everybody else looks at her like she’s a leper, like she’s contagious with something they don’t want to catch, but MG bounds up to her immediately, wrapping her into a hug.
She doesn’t quite hug back before he sets her back down and backs off quickly.
“I’m so sorry that was very non-consensual. Are you okay? I’m just really excited you’re back,” he rattles off, rapid fire.
“So how was Malivore? Do you remember all of us? Oh my god, what if you don’t know my name? Holy shit, I’m so sorry! Let me introduce myself! I’m Milton Greasley, but please just call me MG. We were kinda friends before you jumped into a pit because you were the only one who would talk to me about-”
“Comic books. Green Lantern is your favorite, I prefer the Watchmen. We have a standing deal to watch Batman v. Superman at least once a month because it’s dumb superhero fun.” Hope breaks into the boy’s rapid speech with a soft smile.
MG pauses to take a breath and breaks out into the most brilliant grin. “Yeah. It’s good to have you back Hope.”
Josie waits a little longer to approach her, waits until Hope is in her room unpacking before softly knocking on the door.
"Hey Josie." Hope says, without looking up.
"I'm glad you're back."
"I'm glad to be back."
"She’s glad you’re back too.”
Hope smiles sadly. “She has a funny way of showing it.”
Josie sighs and puts both her hands on Hope’s shoulders, forcing her to turn around and look at her. “She was the first one to realize something was wrong. It’s just a little weird for her to know something is missing versus being confronted by it.”
Hope’s face must show her befuddlement because Josie cracks a smile. “Oh my god, you’re hopeless.”
“No, I’m Hope.”
“She literally talked to you for six hours yesterday. She won’t even talk to me on the phone for longer than she has to.”
“She probably just felt sorry for me, you know after I got stuck in an all-encompassing shit pit for four months. I mean, why else would she talk to me for six hours and then not come up to me when I finally get home?”
“Because she has a crush on you.”
Hope stares blankly at Josie for what seems like forever before a small grin finally breaks across her face. “Really?”
Josie’s eyebrows skyrocket and she lets out a loud laugh. “Oh my god, you’re both idiots. You’re perfect for each other.”
“Shut up! I mean, don’t shut up, actually tell me everything. Does she really like me?”
Josie shakes her head. “She’s down by the lake, so why don’t you go ask her yourself?”
“Are you, of all people, encouraging me to confront my emotions? You? The girl who burned down my room in order to avoid confronting me about emotions?”
Josie just rolls her eyes. “That’s ancient history and you know it. Don’t be a dick, just go talk to her.”
Still, she puts off talking to Lizzie until nightfall. Perhaps she waits to gather the courage she knows she should have. She can fight monsters and claw her way back out of that terrible excuse for a mudbath, so talking to a girl about feelings should be easy, right?
Josie informs her that Lizzie is still by the lake, probably skipping stones and angering the fish.
“A little bird told me I could find you here,” Hope calls out as she approaches the blonde.
There’s no response from Lizzie, just another rock flying out from her hand and skimming across the lake surface before dropping beneath the soft waves.
Hope attempts to walk closer, but is stopped by a magical barrier. She puts a hand on it and feels the faint bitter taste she’s come to associate with Lizzie’s magic. She concentrates for a moment and busts through the barrier just as Lizzie turns around.
“I-uh, wanted to talk to you and the barrier was in the way,” Hope stutters out.
“Are you in the habit of breaking through walls that clearly exist for a reason?” Lizzie sighs, turning away from Hope and resuming her rock skipping.
“I’m in the habit of apparently sticking my foot in places it doesn’t belong, both in my mouth and Malivore. Can we talk?” Hope opts to sit a fair distance from Lizzie and grabs a few rocks of her own.
She attempts to throw one, but it sinks beneath the waves with a disappointing plop .
“Never skipped rocks before?”
“Not a lot of lake time in Malivore actually.”
“You’re holding it all wrong, here,” Lizzie leans over, corrects Hope wrist so it’s more sideways, and loosens up her grip on the rock. “The trick is to throw less, flick more.”
Hope flicks the rock out from her hand, getting a solid two skips before it sinks.
Lizzie flicks one right after, skipping it four times before it sinks as well.
“You cheated, there’s no way you got it to go four times naturally!” Hope exclaims.
“Couple of things. One, I used all my magic doing a barrier that you so elegantly tore down. Two, I haven’t siphoned since this morning so there’s no way I would have enough left to cheat. And three, you’re just mad you’re bad at skipping rocks.” Lizzie smiles softly, looking deliberately forward so as to not make eye contact with Hope during her statement.
Hope narrows her eyes. “Do it again then.”
Lizzie picks up another rock, lines up her shot, and skips it across the water a total of five times before it surrenders to the waves.
“Show-off.”
“Only when I’m trying to one-up you.”
They don’t talk much for the rest of the night, but as they part ways in the halls of school Lizzie sweeps Hope into a hug that feels right.
“I’m glad you’re back,” the blonde whispers into her ear before disappearing into her own room.
“I think I’m gonna do something stupid,” Hope says, three days after her return to the Salvatore School.
“You’re finally gonna ask my sister out?” Josie asks, not looking up from her book.
Hope doesn’t respond, already halfway out of the room and heading towards the place she’s pretty sure Lizzie will end up at some point.
She ends up waiting at the lake for two hours before Lizzie calls her name.
“Hey Hope, a little bird told me that you were looking for me.”
“What else did the little bird say?”
“She said you were going to do something stupid, but I feel like I can handle that.”
Hope stands up and suddenly she’s much too close to Lizzie, who is looking at her with amusement in her clear blue eyes and a slight smile on her face.
“I- I was uh-”
“Hope?”
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
And then Lizzie Saltzman is kissing her.
A martyr isn’t something Hope Mikaelson planned on becoming, but sitting on a couch, arms wrapped around Lizzie as she talks about something that makes her eyes light up while Josie rolls her eyes and MG defends Rorschach as a good superhero name (when it's clearly not) cements something inside of her.
It’s the part of her that tells her she would do anything for these people.
It’s the part that she thinks her mother would be proud of, that her father would look at with approval.
Maybe she can’t change the martyrs or the darkness in her life but maybe she can find something to live for (something to die for).
And maybe that’s enough.