Chapter Text
The sound of classical music drifted into the large bedroom, briefly relaxing the harsh set of her shoulders before the auburn-haired girl reached out and pulled herself up to the steel bar once more.
Twenty-seven...
Twenty-eight...
Twenty-nine...
Sweat dripped down her neck in long trails, and she lost her count for the seventh time in a single minute. She had only just started exercising and she was already exhausted.
With a heavy sigh, she dropped to her feet and wiped at her face, grabbing the water bottle on her desk. She took a small sip before jumping back up to the pull-up bar again.
Twenty-nine...
With a crash, her door exploded open and she fell to the floor with a yelp. The girl was home alone—meaning she was either getting robbed or killed right now. She accepted her fate and closed her eyes, but nothing happened for several long seconds.
She slowly looked up at her attacker, finding a small boy in Green Lantern pajamas smiling down at her.
“MG,” she grumbled, standing up with the help of his hand. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“Sorry, Hope.” He grinned, sitting down on her bed with a radio in his hand. He looked around her room despite the fact that he had been in it a million times before, and his smile grew.
“How the fuck are you working out to Beethoven?” he asked, and Hope Mikaelson rolled her eyes.
“Mozart,” she corrected, rubbing at the sweat on her face with her shirt. “Why didn’t you just ring the doorbell?”
“I did.” He pouted, fiddling with the device in his hand nervously. Hope’s eyes lingered on it as he talked. “You didn’t answer. Where’s your aunt, by the way?”
“Freya picked up an extra shift at the hospital,” she explained, throwing a zip-up hoodie on over her tank top. “Why are you here?”
She didn’t mean to sound annoyed, but it was late and she had tryouts for lacrosse the next day. She needed to make the team this year, like her father had when he was her age.
MG looked at her very carefully before standing up and holding out the radio in his hand. “Look, I know it’s late, but something’s wrong. My mom left in a hurry a couple of minutes ago. She wouldn’t tell me why so I stole her police scanner...and guess what I heard?”
Hope wrinkled her nose, unimpressed. “What?”
MG paused for dramatic effect. “They found a dead body.”
Hope blinked.
Not getting any reaction out of his friend, he continued. “Two joggers in the woods discovered the body, supposedly. The whole Mystic Falls police force is on it, including the State Department.”
“Wow, that’s so cool,” Hope deadpanned, flopping onto her desk chair.
“No, it’s not,” MG said quietly, and the girl across from him perked up. She had never seen the boy so unenthusiastic about a crime case. “They’re saying it could be one of us.”
Hope instantly felt dread pool in her stomach.
“The description fits a girl in her teens.”
“A girl in her teens? They haven’t identified her?” Hope had a feeling she didn’t want to know who it was.
“That’s the thing.” MG shook his head. “They only found half of her body.”
—
“Are we really doing this?” Hope whispered, almost tripping on a branch. She couldn’t believe that they were seriously playing around in the woods, trying to find a dead body.
“Do you have anything better to do?” MG shined his flashlight in her eyes to get his point across, nearly blinding her. Hope swatted him away with an annoyed frown.
“I wanted to get some sleep before the first day of school,” she said lamely, looking around. The forest was awfully quiet for how many people MG claimed to be inside of it. She kicked a pebble, then added, “And tryouts.”
“You’re going to make the team for sure,” he told her, slowing down so she could catch up. The boy tended to walk fast when he got excited. “You’ve been practicing the whole summer.”
“I should’ve started a long time ago,” she murmured, her mind far away from the forest. He stopped her before she could zone out too much.
“That’s not fair.” MG paused in front of her, so abruptly that she almost bumped into him. “You’ve been through a lot.”
She chose not to respond, and they continued to walk around aimlessly until the pair came in front of a dilapidated house.
“Isn’t that...?” MG trailed off. Hope felt a burst of emotion at the scene in front of her—a large, two-story house that was black from soot and ash. Once, a long time ago, it was her home.
“I...I think so,” she said, her voice suspiciously rough.
“Oh.” The boy sounded like all the air in his body had been suffocated out of him, and Hope just nodded blankly. She turned away and made a weak sound at the back of her own throat, feeling much heavier than she had coming into the forest.
It had been so long since she had been here that she no longer remembered the path to get to the house, and she had been none the wiser when they had stumbled upon the building in ruins. Hope had even been surprised.
She used to know the woods like home, but without her family, she had come to realize that they were just woods. The moment her family had burnt to death in that house, the forest and everything inside of it had lost all meaning to her.
Hope and MG continued to walk until the boy suddenly halted as they were climbing up a small hill. He fell to the ground and Hope scrunched up her face in confusion as he shushed her and turned off his flashlight.
She only nodded and crouched next to him, her eyes catching sight of a dozen or so police officers in front of her, their own flashlights pointed in different directions.
“Shit...”
The two looked at each other. “Are they...?”
They both got up and started running as they realized that many of the adults were coming towards them. Hope ducked behind a tree just as MG got caught.
“Easy, Biscuit,” a woman Hope knew to be Veronica Greasley whispered, trying to calm down the barking dog at her side. Hope tried not to laugh as she imagined the canine lunging at her friend.
“Hey, Mom,” MG greeted cheerfully, if a bit nervously, and Hope clenched her eyes shut as she heard them start to drift near her. She tried to make herself as narrow as possible—the tree was only so big, though.
“Milton Greasley!” his mother scolded. Hope grimaced, knowing the boy would be in a world of trouble when he got home. “I told you to stop listening to my calls!”
He made some excuse that Hope couldn’t hear passed her heart pounding in her ears and the leaves crunching beneath her feet. She could hear his mom perfectly fine, though. The woman was much louder than her timid, eager son. “Where’s your friend?”
The auburn-haired girl swallowed.
“Hope?”
Gee, thanks, MG.
“She’s not with me.”
Hope turned her head to look just as a flashlight glared in her eyes, and she swiftly jumped back behind the cover of the tree.
“Hope? Are you there?” Mrs. Greasley called out three times before giving up. “Fine. I’ll believe you just this once, Milton. But I’m walking you back to your car...”
The mother and son pair started to walk away, and as their voices grew quiet, Hope stepped out of her hiding spot.
Damn it. There goes my ride.
Now Hope would have to walk back home herself, if she could even remember the way. It hadn’t been a particularly long drive, however, so she figured she would live the night, at least.
Her breath fogged in front of her as she walked, stumbling around for anything that looked familiar. At last, saw a couple of trees that she recognized, and headed in that direction, hugging herself in the cold. Her thin jacket had not been a good choice, she realized.
Just as she put her hands in her pocket, the girl heard a weird sound above her head. She looked up, expecting to get hit with a fallen branch, but nothing of that sort happened.
Instead, within seconds, several actual—actual—deer started jumping through the space around her, and when she fell over, they jumped over her.
She yelped as her torso hit the ground first, throwing her hands in front of her face at an awful attempt to shield it from the sprinting animals. After about thirty seconds of extreme panicking where she contemplated screaming for help, the deer disappeared in the opposite direction of where they first came.
The forest fell back into silence, and she looked around, wondering what the hell just happened. Why had the deer been so scared? And what were they running from?
As she stood up panting, Hope rubbed at her pants to wipe the dirt off. Once she was satisfied, she took a step forward and immediately tripped over a rock.
She rolled over, her vision bleary. Since MG and her had gotten caught, the sky had only gotten darker and now she could barely see five feet in front of her. She slipped out her phone from her back pocket and decided to use the screen as a flashlight.
Almost immediately, the light beamed across the space in front of her. In the next instant, Hope Mikaelson screamed soundlessly at what was revealed to her by the light—
Next to where she had previously fallen lay the dead body they had been looking for, completely naked and amputated at the waist. Hope’s heart plummeted to her feet at the person she recognized: Dana Lilien, a girl who played soccer at Mystic Falls High School.
Hope lurched back in shock, her jaw trembling as she fought the urge to throw up all over the ground. She looked away, the sudden spell of dizziness too much to handle and she promptly emptied out the contents of her stomach right next to Dana’s dead body.
Sure, she had never liked the girl, but she could at least be respectful.
Hope wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand, freezing as she heard some type of growling behind her. She slowly twisted her body around, and her blood thickened to ice as she saw a nearly indistinguishable, black animal with red eyes in the distance.
It was certainly not one she recognized, but if she had to guess, she would say that it was some kind of ugly gorilla mixed with the body of a wolf. Hope backed up slowly, but the animal was too fast and in one, single leap, it closed the distance.
She was thrown onto her back so swiftly that she couldn’t even register the hit, and she couldn’t register the pain either when the disgusting beast swiped or bit or whatever that filthy thing had done to her stomach.
She kicked with all her might and started running away when the animal oddly gave her the chance to. Of course, Hope Mikaelson was not one to turn her back on mercy, and ironically enough, she instantly took off, her feet carrying her despite having no idea where she was going.
She tripped and fell the entire time, her summer of eye-hand coordination practice and endurance running no help whatsoever as she found she could not catch her breath or walk a single step without crashing to the ground.
She saw a break in the treeline and ran faster in that direction, sprinting out into the road just as a car sped in front of her. Much like she had earlier, Hope froze and attempted to shield herself from the incoming hit, but to yet another surprise, the car swerved and passed her.
She watched it forlornly, her adrenaline fading as the pain in her stomach hit her all at once. She groaned and lifted up her shirt to look at the offending wound, finding a large set of teeth imprinted into her skin.
The moon in the sky glowed as if to mock her, and the sound of howling a second later did not make her feel any better.
How was she going to explain this to Freya?
—
Hope turned into her parking spot, immediately seeing MG already waiting for her by the bike rack. He had a car of his own, of course, but Hope discovered late last night that he had gotten it taken away from him, resigning the boy to ride his bicycle to the very first day of school.
MG’s mother had watched him leave to make sure Hope wouldn’t give him a ride to school, so the auburn-haired girl hadn’t been able to do that, either.
“I can’t show you it now,” Hope hissed, rolling her eyes at his expectant gaze.
Luckily, MG hadn’t gotten his phone taken away, and the two had been up texting all night about the bite mark gnawed into her stomach.
It was still bleeding despite the two boxes of bandages she had used to cover it up from her aunt’s supply, but the pain wasn’t as bad as it had been hours ago.
“Why not?” MG whined, and Hope raised her eyebrows at him.
“Because we’re in the parking lot and you’ll look like a pervert?” she told him, forming it like a question just as he did, and he finally relented.
“So it was a deer that bit you?” MG asked, climbing up the steps to the main entrance of the school.
“I don’t know...” She shrugged her shoulders. “I think it was a wolf. I’m pretty sure I heard howling.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did,” Hope sighed, giving him a weird look.
“No, I mean, you’re didn’t,” MG reiterated, laughing slightly. “Virginia doesn’t have wolves—and certainly not Mystic Falls.”
Hope frowned. “Then what the hell bit me?”
“No clue.” MG smiled then as his eyes shifted to somewhere else. His irises took on a glazed over look as he practically swooned. “Do you think Lizzie will notice me this year?”
Hope looked over at the blonde in question, who was making out with Sebastian against her locker. “No clue.”
MG punched her shoulder, and immediately moaned in pain. “Ow. Are you made of steel now or something? Maybe you did work too hard over the—“
The bell rang, then, signaling students to go to first period, but the sound reached Hope’s ears so loudly that she urgently clamped her hands over them. The damage was already done, however, and she threw her head back in pain.
Her eyes flashed for just a second, but no one saw it, and memories of the night before blinked within her pupil like a slideshow:
Deer. Dana dead. Red eyes. A black wolf. Deer. Dana dead—
“MG.” She grabbed him so hard that he nearly bumped into several other people. How could she have forgotten it before? “Dana is dead.”
“What?”
“Dana. Is. Dead.”
—
Hope and MG sat together at lunch, one in deep thought and the other in shock. After five minutes of complete silence, MG whimpered, “Dana died?”
Hope nodded for the fourth time that day, stunned that the boy still could not believe it. “I can’t prove it, but I saw what I saw.”
“How—how are we going to tell them?” He gestured to the lunch room around them, bustling with gossip and chatter. The pair themselves sat alone, the two loners of the school.
They both looked over at where Dana would normally sit with her soccer friends. Her seat was taken by another boy, and Hope wondered if her friends had even noticed their teammate was absent. It seemed that her and MG, two perfect strangers to the girl, were the only ones grieving.
“MG.” She tilted her head and glanced at him curiously. She swallowed the bite of apple in her throat, and it fell down to her stomach like acid. “I don’t think they care to know.”
“Well, uh, Lizzie looks really pretty today,” MG said after a moment, trying to change the subject. Hope glanced over as if to check.
“Yeah, she does,” she agreed distantly, her eyes trained on her food in front of her. She suddenly felt her appetite completely disappear.
“I heard that her twin sister is coming to town,” MG added, still staring at the object of his affection with gentle eyes. “Err, actually she already has, I think. She started her first day this morning.”
Hope blinked. That was news. Since when did Elizabeth Saltzman have a twin sister?
“Twin sister?” she asked. “Where did you hear that from? You only have one friend.”
MG blushed. “Shut up.”
They both laughed, before he explained. “Lizzie said they’re close, but that they’ve spent much of their childhood apart—Lizzie and her mom here, her twin and her father in France.”
“Hmm. Are you hoping they look alike?” Hope wondered out loud. She then jibed, “Maybe you might actually have a chance with this one.”
“Hey,” he pretended to be wounded, “I like Lizzie for more than just her looks.” As he finished talking, Hope stood up to throw her food away, grabbing his tray as well.
“That’s funny, I can’t imagine her having a personality,” Hope called back to him, smirking slightly. When she turned around to face the trash can again, she bumped directly into another person.
Hope saw the water bottle fall out of the person’s hand in slow motion, and she managed to catch it with her own left hand while juggling MG and her’s food trays in her right. When her eyes flitted back up to the person’s own, the world faded away to the chocolate brown irises and full lips across from her.
Hope thought that the girl she had just bumped into was very, very pretty. Her brown hair fell in small waves around her face, and she had a nice necklace adorning her neck.
Somehow, Hope quickly realized that the girl’s hand had ended up on her bicep to balance herself, and she swayed forward before standing completely still. Despite the fact that she was no longer in trouble of falling over, the girl’s hand continued to grip Hope’s upper arm more tightly as the seconds passed.
They stared at each other for what seemed like a full minute until the brunette furrowed her eyebrows and dropped her gaze to Hope’s arm. She then began to clutch at certain spots as if bewildered at how hard Hope’s skin was.
Hope absentmindedly noted that MG had done the same thing earlier.
After another long minute, she cleared her throat awkwardly.
“Oh my god.” The girl pulled her hand away quickly, her cheeks flushing a nice rose color. “I’m sorry. I basically just felt you up.”
Hope willed herself to remain calm, and smirked softly. This was a hard feat to do with her hands full. “Don’t worry about it.”
She tossed the plastic trays into the recycling bin, and took a step back as the girl continued to stare at her. Hope waved her water bottle in her face.
“Did you want this back?” she asked. If she could just remain cool and collected for the next five minutes, she would be the happiest person alive.
“Oh, you can have it,” the girl said, and then clamped her lips shut. She blushed brighter this time, and Hope got the idea that that was not what she meant to say.
“Really?”
“No,” the girl laughed, taking it from her hand sweetly. Hope did not miss how her fingers gently brushed against her own. “I paid, like, five bucks for it.”
She nodded, everything becoming clear. She widened her eyes as if coming to some great revelation. “You must be new, then. First thing you should know: never buy water from the cafeteria, only the vending machines.”
She kept her tone light, but made sure the brunette knew she was dead serious.
The girl across from her pouted, and Hope realized that they were still standing in the middle of the cafeteria for way too long to be considered friendly. Even Lizzie’s clique had noticed. “So, the lunch lady scammed me?”
Hope laughed. “I’m afraid so.”
The girl laughed then, too, and Hope thought that was a very nice sound.
“I’m Josie,” the brunette said after they were done, and Hope thought that was a very nice name.
“Hope.”
“And I’m Lizzie.” Hope sighed as the blonde suddenly appeared right next to them. She had been so entranced in the girl in front of her she had not even seen her approach.
“Glad we’ve all introduced ourselves,” Lizzie clipped, and then started to push Josie away. “Now, hurry, Jo, before she corrupts you.”
Josie threw an apologetic look over her shoulder at Hope, and Hope winced the moment she turned back.
Great. Of course she’s Lizzie’s twin sister.