Work Text:
Can You Give Me Your Hand? Here, This is For You
It was Hope’s turn to take the train.
When you live in New Orleans and your girlfriend lives in a town in the middle of Nowhere, Virginia (Mystic Falls) while having no car, but not wanting to take a flight, a train was the next best thing.
Trains were their thing now. That thing that wasn’t really theirs, but did feel like theirs.
They told each other that while they were on the train, they would write letters and take pictures, so that they would have something else from each other when the other left.
So, that’s what Hope was doing right now.
Dear Josie,
By the time you read this, I’ll most likely already be on the train heading back to New Orleans. At the moment that I write this, I haven’t even seen you yet, haven’t left yet… And I already miss you. I miss the way your hand fits perfectly into mine, I miss the way you smell like the pink fairy gumdrop candle in your room. And I miss the way your kisses taste like strawberries.
I love you quite passionately. I fell in love with a girl who taught me that I wasn’t difficult to love. And it’s this reason, one of the many, that, even though it took me longer than you had anticipated, I am mesmerized by you. My accidental happily ever after. The beginning of the most important chapter of my life book.
Do you remember the day we went to the sunflower field at night? And we used a light spell to light up as much as we could without anyone seeing us? Ever since then, I look at the moonlight and I’m reminded of how even the stars are in awe of your beauty.
You have a heart that could set ablaze the whole galaxy, Josette Lucas Saltzman. You’re a high I could never come down from. These pictures are a resemblance of that.
Hope put away the letter in the envelope and took out her film camera. She lost track of how many pictures she took, but it took up the whole roll. So, she then switched to the digital camera. She took fewer photos on this camera, mostly because she always preferred film over digital.
Once off the train six hours later, she went to the local photo shop in Mystic Falls to select the ones she wanted to get printed from her digital camera. She also gave the film roll to the owner, where she took it upon herself to develop every photo in the darkroom, letting her choose later which ones she wanted to keep. Finally, after choosing all of them, the woman put them all in a small album, since Hope let her know she needed an album that could fit inside the envelope.
Drawing has always been Hope’s passion, so she sketched something as quickly as she could to fit in the front cover of the album. Putting everything inside, including the letter, Hope realized how out of this world the envelope came to look.
3 Months Later
Josie was on the Amtrak heading from Mystic Falls to New Orleans. It had been three months since she last saw Hope Mikaelson, and she was ready to be with her. So ready.
One thing that she wants to do when she gets there is to go to a bakery of Hope’s choice. She’ll have a strawberry shortcake cheesecake and Hope will have a beignet. Her favorite dessert. Truth be told, she’ll order anything strawberry as long as the tribrid tells her her kisses taste like strawberries again.
She snaps herself out of her thoughts in order to grab her camera and start taking pictures, before she writes her letter. She wants to do something a little different than what Hope did with her pictures. The brunette thinks of doing a digital album, so that Hope can have her pictures on her phone. So that she’s always with her wherever she goes.
After two hours of scenery photography, Josie sits back down in her booth, takes out her journal, and writes.
Hope,
My light. I know that you didn’t wait until I got on my train in order to read this. You’re sitting on a bench at the train station and I know you’re opening this cautiously so as to not ruin anything.
The thing is, you can never ruin anything. The other thing is, there are no words to describe how perfect you are. The English language truly failed me here. So, instead, I’ll write it out in Japanese. あなたは美しい人の中で最も美しい人です. 私はあなたを永遠に愛することを知っています. I’ll let you decipher what that all means :)
If given the chance, this letter would be me repeatedly telling you that I love you. But I also want to provide more than that. I love you. Everything hurts when you’re not around. The moon looks less bright, the ocean feels much colder. I’m grateful for technology and for all those 2 am calls where we tell each other, “I’m yours,” and one of us replies, “I’m yours, too.”
I always look at the album you gifted me a few months ago. Writing out “a few months ago” hurts. The sketch you did of the two of us is so beautiful. But the pictures of the forest, the animals, Hope, do you really see me like you see nature? Melody and harmony, calming peace? Do you remember that day we were in the forest having a late night picnic and you told me that? That the way you felt about nature was the way you saw me? And you showed me your wolf form? I think that was the most intimate the two of us have ever been.
You love every bit of me, Hope Mikaelson. Thank you. I couldn’t do this adventure I call life without you. All I ever wanted was someone who never gave up on me, who understood every intricacy of my soul. And I finally have it. I have that love that everyone wishes they had, the one that the greatest films of all time wish they could show on the big screen.
You made me see that I had something missing from my life. And, my love, that was you. I can’t wait to come back home.
Once out of the train, Josie runs. Runs towards the nearest taxi to get to the photography shop Hope showed her the first time she came here and make the digital album. The faster she gets there, the faster she can finish and hug Hope Mikaelson until all the air comes back to her lungs. The air she’s been missing since 3 months ago.
It always ends the same.
Hope and Josie face each other at the train station. They ask each other, “can you give me your hand?”, waits for the other to say “yes,” and proceed to say, “here, this is for you.”
They know exactly what’s inside the envelope. The greatest of all love letters, the most magnificent photographs (for each other, anyway, which is what’s most important here.) they’ve ever seen. Each and every letter, each and every photo being better than the last. Each and every letter, each and every photo having the Mikaelson and Saltzman falling in love with each other more and more.
There are no tears, just a heartfelt “see you later.” A long time holding hands. A long-lasting hug.
Until next time, when they come back home.
Fin.