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Lizzie Saltzman touches the things she loves.
It’s subconscious, habitual, comforting.
Like most things in Lizzie’s life, it starts with Josie. It will always start and end with Josie. A thunderstorm, to be more specific, and her sister’s reaction to it.
They’re six years old when Virginia gets the storm of the century.
Mystic Falls doesn’t often get storms like these, the kind that bring sheets of rain, thunder so loud it shakes the whole house, and lightning that tears across the sky so brightly night turns into day. Josie wakes first, sitting up in bed and curling her knees close to her chest.
Another loud crack of thunder is what wakes Lizzie a little while later, and she’s temporarily confused as to why she’s awake until she hears Josie’s soft sniffles. Without a second thought, she’s up, padding across the cold bedroom floor, and crawling into her sister’s bed.
There are no words spoken, none are really needed between them. There’s just the comforting feeling of Josie’s soft breaths against her shoulder as her sniffles slowly stop and her breath evens out.
Lizzie stays awake for a while longer, staring at the leak in their bedroom ceiling and focusing on the way Josie’s left hand twitches every so often. It’s comforting, having Josie in her arms. She can’t control the world and protect her sister the way she wants to most of the time, but right now she can make sure Josie feels safe enough to fall asleep, even with the storm raging outside their window.
She’s around that same age when she learns that she hurts the ones she loves, even without realizing it.
Lizzie can sense power when it’s around her, and on instinct she reaches out towards it. She’s told by her aunt Bonnie that it’s a survival instinct for siphoners - since they don’t have magic of their own, their brain is hardwired to find the nearest source and take, take, take -
Lizzie doesn’t much like the feeling of taking.
She actually really fucking hates it. She can see that it hurts people, no matter how much Aunt Bonnie tries to hide it.
She doesn’t like feeling like a black hole where power goes in but never comes out in the right way.
So she works hard, oftentimes under the cover of darkness, sneaking into the library to research the origins of siphoning, even going so far as to break into her dad’s office for rare books he keeps in there. It takes her half a year to start to understand why siphoning hurts. It takes three months after that for her to teach Josie how to take without hurting.
By their eighth birthday, they can siphon without hurting other witches. Siphoning from other living (or nonliving) things like vampires and werewolves was still a work in progress but they don’t seem to feel as much pain as witches did, so she’ll take the victory where she can.
Lizzie is just relieved that she can hug Aunt Bonnie without her pulling away with a grimace.
She can sense power.
Maybe that’s why her gaze keeps drifting over to the new girl, Hope.
That’s what she keeps telling herself anyway.
Lizzie is fully aware she’s touchy. She’ll reach out mostly without realizing it, for Josie or her mom, whenever she can. She doesn’t realize why she does it until she reaches out for Caroline one night and she’s not there. She reaches out for her mother and cries when she doesn’t find her. Her father looks at her with pity in his eyes and she hates that look, hates the pity, hates feeling out of control. Josie’s hand in hers, warm and soft, is the only thing keeping her there.
She’s ten when she has her first breakdown.
Josie’s touch, solid over her heart, is the only thing that brings her back down from the swirling emotions that lift her up and throw her around. She cries and screams and only calms down when Josie’s heartbeat against her ears reminds her of what peace is.
It takes her two months to learn techniques for calming herself down, to try and hold off the breakdown and get to a safe space. There are the normal ones that help stave off her episodes, counting five things she can sense with all of her senses, taking deep breaths, finding another outlet. Then there are the ones that involve magic, namely getting rid of all of her magic.
Which is how she ends up here, in the woods, making small creatures out of leaves from the forest floor and levitating them to dance above her. She’s breathing deeply, in a space all her own, when she feels a hand touch her shoulder.
Lizzie will never know why but her first instinct is to siphon. So she does. Whoever is touching her is powerful, incredibly powerful . When Lizzie breaks the touch to turn around she’s face to face with Hope.
The swirl of emotions in the back of her head quiets for a moment and all she can focus on is the way Hope reaches back out to touch her arm again, despite what’s just happened.
Finally, someone isn’t afraid to touch her.
Hope is trying to say something to her but the emotions have come back in full-force now and all Lizzie can manage is a strangled “Get Josie, please.”
Hope looks torn for a second before turning away and bolting out of the woods.
As much as Lizzie loves her sister, and it is a lot, they fall apart sometimes. It’s like a trainwreck she can’t look away from, the way Josie expects her to be able to talk about what’s causing her to play with her pen instead of writing her chemistry lab report.
“Just talk to me,” Josie pleads, sitting on the edge of her desk.
But the problem is that Lizzie doesn’t know how. She doesn’t know how to explain that this girl makes her want to forget all the rules she made for them about siphoning. Doesn’t know how to explain that this girl might just let her take and take and take. Doesn’t know how to verbalize the feeling that she could just let go. So she doesn’t.
Josie leaves in a huff, Lizzie lets her go. She can see exactly where she went wrong in that exchange, but there's no clear path for her to do the right thing, to stick to the rules, when Hope makes her want to forget them all. So she resolves to steal some of Josie's favorite cheese puffs from the kitchen and use them as a peace offering.
On her way down to the kitchen, she sees Josie talking with Hope and can’t quite figure out the feeling in her stomach, but she knows she doesn’t like it.
If Lizzie doesn’t touch something, it will disappear. She learns this fact early and often in life, with her mother constantly gone, her father increasingly distant, with crushes, and friends. The final kick in the ass comes from Josie of all people. Josie who Lizzie knows would never truly leave her for anything. Josie who can’t stop talking about Penelope Park. Josie who asks her if it’s really okay for her to go on a date tonight at least three times before Lizzie just pushes her sister out the door with a soft kiss on the forehead.
She’s fed up with the quiet of their room in ten minutes.
She ends up in the woods after thirty.
She takes from the trees, from the nature around her, takes because she knows she won’t hurt anyone, takes because this is the only way she can quench the thirst for power she has and despises, takes so she can cope with Josie being out of sight and out of the safety she so desperately wants to keep her in.
Lizzie screams as she lets it out and while it helps her feel better, she knows she’ll suffer the consequences as she coughs and sees traces of blood on her hands. This is how she knows she’s taken too much. This is how she knows she’s fucked up and she shouldn’t like this feeling of take, take, take , because it’s bad for her. It’s bad for both of them really but Josie is much better at control, has always been better at control. Unlike Lizzie who always just took and took and took.
It’s always about having too much power and not wanting it, about wanting to let it out, to let it free. Lizzie has to laugh at the irony of being a siphoner whose instinct says to take and not stop taking but being a girl whose heart says give until you have enough to survive without destroying yourself. Leave some for your sister, for somebody else.
It takes years for Lizzie to feel comfortable touching other people, because being told her touch is hurtful for her entire childhood leaves a lifetime of baggage to work through but she’s trying.
“Hey! Lizzie!” a voice rings out, a hand touches her shoulder.
That instinct. Take, take, take.
Deep breath. Don’t siphon. Don’t take. Just smile.
“Yeah, Hope?”
Lizzie Saltzman doesn’t much like the feeling of taking. She does, however, love the feeling of falling.
And falling is the only way she can describe what she feels when she siphons from Hope.
Hope who has so much power that it feels almost endless. That she can keep taking and taking and never run empty. That Hope would always have more to give.
Hope who gives up control so freely to Lizzie even though every cell in her body screams stop taking it.
Hope who doesn’t mind the constant touching, the need that Lizzie has to make sure she’s still there.
Hope who understands possibly more than anyone else that need and touch are the same as want and keep.
Hope who, when given a chance to leave, stays right where she is.
Hope who makes falling in love feel easy.