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“What is with you and coming out here late at night?”
Hope doesn’t react, only flops down beside Lizzie. When she settles down, a bottle resting by her side, she looks at Lizzie, eyes tired.
“I don’t know, Lizzie, I could ask you the same thing.”
Lizzie doesn’t reply, doesn’t care enough to. She steals the bottle and pops it open easily, Hope not making a move to stop her. The juice tastes weird, a strong taste, and dense on her tongue.
“The hell is this?”
Hope simply steals the bottle again, drinks and sighs happily when she does. “It’s called pin.”
Lizzie can only look at her, clueless and lost. “I’m all for fun but by god, I don’t know what the fuck that is.”
“It’s pear juice and gin. Pin for short. I found it on the refrigerator and I took it.”
“No permission asked?” says Lizzie, a small smile on her face.
“No permission at all.”
Hope smiles at her and it’s why she keeps teasing her. “It’s still a very weird combo, name and all.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers. Weird combo is still a good drink at the end of the night.”
It’s a weird combo indeed. It’s a weird combo to drink at 3 am. Almost as weird as Hope being up at 3 am after finally being up from her sleep ever since she entered Josie’s mind.
Hope shouldn’t be here, alone and tired, and drinking the weirdest drink combo ever.
She shouldn’t but she is and Lizzie cannot find it in her to complain. Because she’s weak at 3 am and a sleepy Hope Mikaelson that she’d missed for the whole month she was asleep isn’t really helping her.
So she lets Hope stay, doesn’t complain and keeps stealing her bottle to drink. It’s the least she can have for letting Hope join her at her special spot.
“I can’t sleep these nights,” confesses Hope, when half the bottle is gone and her head rests on the cold soil of the woods.
Lizzie hums, grabs her head and rests it on her thighs. Hope only closes her eyes, face falling against her stomach without even controlling herself. She’s cute, it warms Lizzie’s heart and she lets her rest that way.
Was she that tired?
“Pretty sure you got enough sleep in Josie’s mind to make up for it.”
Lizzie kind of regrets saying it, knows that wound is still fresh. But she knows better than anyone that the last thing Hope wants is being treated like glass ready to break. Lizzie sees that easily, knows it by experience, her father’s worried eyes, and Josie’s light steps and guilt at Hope’s condition.
It’s perhaps why she doesn’t tell Hope to try and go sleep, knows it’s futile and that one cannot stop the brain, only can let it run wild until it decides its time to crash.
“Yeah, maybe it’s making up for lost time now,” replies Hope, a smile appearing in her face. It didn’t matter how small it was, the warmth in Lizzie’s heart by it was more than enough.
Her hand rests on Hope’s hair after a minute or two, treading through auburn locks slowly. Hope lets her do that, does nothing but stare at the sky or around them, silence falling over them as they simply exist.
“It was weird without you here.”
Hope’s eyes snap to her, glinting under the moonlight like sapphires that Lizzie finds hidden between the shining stars.
“Be careful or I’ll start thinking you missed me.”
Lizzie rolls her eyes, hits her forehead gently with her finger. “I simply never got my chance to hang out with you, Mikaelson. Don’t put words in my mouth.”
“Why is that so hard for me to believe?” teases Hope, and it’s easy to laugh at that, to let herself fall in their usual teasing banter.
But then Hope’s eyes glaze over and she’s brought back to reality. A reality that she doesn’t prefer at times, one where she lost Hope the moment she got her and then lost her again the moment she got her back again.
Theirs was a… relationship not easily defined. But Lizzie knew one thing, one thing she hoped the girl in her lap also knew.
Lizzie could leave and Hope could leave and they could lose each other in the mids of their chaotic lives, supernatural or not problems, but they’d always find their way back to each other.
They’d find their way back to each other after Hope was in a literal hell and they’d find and choose each other in black and white with soft smiles and hands and sparks flying behind them.
It was as comforting as it was a responsibility.
Lizzie would always come back and find Hope.
But did Hope feel the same?
“Do you think trees have feelings?”
Lizzie blinks, stares down at Hope and keeps staring until she realizes the girl did ask that question.
“Where did that even come from?”
“I don’t know,” says Hope. “I was just remembering how I hit this tree as a wolf last night so hard that it fell down. Do you think it felt the hurt the same way we do?”
Lizzie bites her lip in wonder, hating that she was actually giving it a thought. She cared for nature and judging by the many environmentally friendly products MG always bought her, Lizzie did always think for protecting trees and such.
But to dwell on this topic? Even she wasn’t that much into loving three trees.
“You think that the tree had a family that cried over it when you made it fall?”
“Oh god, what if it did?.”
Lizzie has to laugh at how serious she actually looked, perhaps the alcohol having its effect on the tribrid. Her fingers scratch Hope’s scalp, grabs her attention enough for their eyes to meet.
“Hope, relax. It’s not like they felt it. They are just trees, not beings who feel things.”
Hope’s eyes are still troubled, holding Lizzie’s in a silent question.
That question’s answer is how she ends up kneeling on the ground, hands and nails dirty with soil as Hope gently places the branch she found on the hole Lizzie made. She’s careful and Lizzie idly smells the pear juice and gin on her. At this point, she was sure that the bottle was half-filled with gin instead of the juice.
They both stare in silence at the ground. Out of anything she was thinking of doing this evening, holding a funeral for a tree with Hope Mikaelson was not even on the list.
“Do you want to hold a speech or something?” she asks, clearly meant for a joke but then Hope nods her head and oh-
“Little tree,” Hope starts, pausing to find her words, “I’m sorry that I hurt you. I really didn’t mean to. Sorry to your family too, I guess.”
Lizzie takes her hand, feels that perhaps this is more than just hurting a tree, more than Hope suddenly being the most environmentally responsible person. Judging by how clouded her eyes were, Lizzie wasn’t far from wrong.
“We did you this funeral. Or well, Hope did,” says Lizzie, smiling when Hope stares at her in surprise.
“It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve kissed the air in front of MG. But Hope is the most heroic person one could be, straight out of Greek mythology. So I’m not really surprised she ended up doing this in your honor.”
Hope laughs at that, barely long and Lizzie takes that as a cue to continue. “She really cares for you, even if you’re just a tree. It’s just how she is. So I hope you’re good at… tree heaven? Is that a thing? Since we did all this fancy funeral, it’s now a thing.”
She pauses and her hand glows red where it holds Hope’s. Her magic is warm, feels almost dense when she takes it in. Hope’s magic is the same way she is, strong and powerful and it’s perhaps that reason why the flower growing from the ground is a vibrant as it is.
A blue hyacinth, almost glowing in the darkness of the night. Sincere feelings, a flower created in the honor of someone who was loved until death.
“I don’t want anyone to get hurt like this tree,” mutters Hope.
Hope looks small on those moments, her sweater too big and hand gripping the soil like she’d bring back from the ground the tree itself. Lizzie thinks that she’d bring more than just a tree back from the soil if she could.
But how can you bring back people without a body for you to mourn and cry over? How can you bring back someone who died just for you to be above the same soil?
“You’re such a martyr that people don’t even have the chance to try and get hurt before you save them,” she replies. It’s the best she can say on those moments, perhaps the only comfort Hope wants.
“Martyr with a capital m, didn’t you say so?”
Lizzie nods her head, grabs the bottle with her free hand and drinks. Hope does the same when Lizzie passes it to her, both of them drinking and on their knees before the tree’s grave.
God, when did her life get so weird that that sentence made any actual sense?
“You’re a hero. If anyone gets hurt because of you, it’s your own self because you have been selfless to the point of being selfish,” says Lizzie. It’s true, she knows that and it’s perhaps why she says it.
Hope turns to her then, blinking slowly and with a small smile. “Thankfully I got my own Super Squad to save me, don’t I?”
“You’re in serious trouble if I’m not your right hand there, Mikaelson,” she teases, light and fun.
And when Hope laughs this time, free and so close to the young girl that she is, Lizzie thinks that she’d become a tree burier just to be able to make Hope smile that way.
Lizzie soon realizes, when Hope’s laugh dies down and she drinks the pin again, as they’d lovely nicknamed the drink, that she doesn’t want this moment to end. Doesn’t want to get up and walk out of their bubble and to a reality where she’s Hope’s frenemy and where they have to start thinking of ways to defeat Malivore.
“Do you think we could find more of this and steal it?”
Hope stares at her surprised, eyes moving to the empty bottle before meeting Lizzie’s again. She stands up slowly, chuckling when she nearly falls down again and offers Lizzie a hand.
“Come on. Pretty sure she’ll give it to us willingly. Who can reject a Saltzman and Mikaelson?”
Lizzie thinks Hope is beautiful at that moment.
The moon hits her just right, bathing her in its holy light and Hope looks like a goddess out of the stories she’d read. A goddess of war maybe, hands soft and inviting the same way they could let out the most dangerous of spells.
Hope was a contradiction wrapped in a soft sweater and Lizzie would never get tired of being lured by.
So she grabs the hand again, holds onto it more than necessary before getting up, and doesn’t let it go as Hope pulls her towards the school.
Perhaps they’d never be able to stay in their bubble.
That didn’t mean they couldn’t make their world and reality one where they didn’t want to escape in the darkness of the woods.
“If she’s asleep and angry, let me remind you I’m not Jo and I’d willingly throw you under the bus.”
“And you told me to stop being such a hero, so I’ll drag you down with me.”
“Fair point there.”
And between those jokes and whispered words in barely lit hallways, both girls find solace in each other as they always do.