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“It just seemed like you were all better off without me.” she says. And Lizzie can hear the defeat in her voice but there’s a flash of anger that runs through her at those words, so she turns on Hope.
“What is wrong with you? Do you really have that much of a martyr complex that you couldn’t just, oh I don’t know, ask one of us how we were doing?”
“Look, I know that it seems kind of—”
“Dumb? Selfish? Controlling?”
“Painful.” Hope says.
For a flash, Lizzie wonders if she knows the depth of that word. Painful. Even though she didn’t know it, losing Hope severed something inside of her. Lizzie knows this now, can feel it plainly.
She takes a breath, a beat, then looks Hope in the eye and tells her, “No one’s been better off without you.” And then something pulls at her, something that nags and tugs until she adds on, “I haven’t been better off without you.”
“Lizzie—” Hope starts, but she looks confused and a little sad, so Lizzie cuts her off.
“I’m in love with you.” Lizzie blurts out, the need to make herself perfectly clear pushing the words out of her. And then she freezes. Hope blinks, then opens her mouth—
“No, it’s alright. You don’t have to say anything. I know that you and Landon have an ‘epic love’.” Lizzie shakes her head and looks down. This was a mistake. She shouldn’t have said anything at all. But opening her mouth is what she does, and you’d think by now she’d have learned that it only leads to trouble but for some reason the lesson hasn’t gotten through to her yet. “I just. . . I had to say it, you know?”
She turns, then, to start walking back toward the school. The green leaves of the forest around them feel suffocating, they feel too bright. Lizzie feels like she’s on fire and she just knows that Hope is going to try and let her down easy, but she doesn’t want to hear it. Hope says something behind her, but Lizzie doesn’t listen, and she takes one step forward and triggers a trip wire and then a tranquilizer takes them both out.
#
Lizzie is up and walking back toward the forest before Hope can even stand. She shakes out her hands just to have something physical to help calm her racing heart.
“Lizzie! Could you just stop for a moment?” Hope is trailing after her and Lizzie is grateful for her long legs that give her an advantage on the shorter woman.
“Really, Hope it’s fine! Let’s just get back to avoiding the Minotaur and finding a way out of here.” Lizzie slows just for a moment so she knows Hope can hear her. She makes it into the forest without stepping on any traps before Hope finally stops her.
She says, “I don’t want to get Landon back.”
And Lizzie stops in her tracks. She stops breathing. Her mind goes blank. She turns around and finds Hope looking up at her with an expression in her eyes that Lizzie can’t place. She looks almost guilty.
“What?” Lizzie asks.
“When I first got back, I did want to find him and tell him everything. I wanted to get my life back!” she shakes her head. “But he’s happy with Josie, isn’t he? And seeing them together got me thinking. . . maybe things could be different this time.”
Lizzie lets herself hope, for just a moment. She lets herself envision all of her dreams coming true. “Different how?”
Hope looks away, then, and crosses her arms. “It doesn’t matter now. There’s another portal open. I’m just going to have to jump back in and close it. Everyone’s going to forget me all over again.”
“Then don’t jump back in.” Lizzie says. It seems like the easiest thing in the world.
“Lizzie,” Hope sighs. “If I don’t jump in the monsters will keep coming. No one will ever be safe again.”
“Unless you tell everyone you’re back and we help you find another way to stop the monsters.” Lizzie argues.
“There is no other way. I was created to be the loophole that ends Malivore. It’s the only reason I exist.”
“Yeah, to end Malivore. But we don’t have to destroy it to stop it from unleashing monsters.” Lizzie says, then she takes a breath. “Look, I know you think you have to be the hero. But you don’t always have to do these things alone.”
Something changes in her expression then, but Lizzie still can’t figure out what it is. Before either of them can say anything else there’s a roar in the forest and then they’re running through traps with practiced precision until they lose the damn thing.
#
“I have to be the one to stay behind.” Hope, at least, looks sad about what she’s said.
Lizzie grits her teeth and resists the urge to stomp her foot and cross her arms. For as much as she loves Hope, she can be really annoying sometimes.
“Did you not hear what I just said? No.” Lizzie shakes her head. “I’m not letting you take the deal.”
“It has to be me.” Hope tells her. “You have Josie and your dad to get back to; people who will miss you when you’re gone.”
“You sure you want to play this game, Mikaelson? You’re not the only one who exists for just one purpose.” Lizzie spits. “If I go back Josie and I will have to merge. But here? In a no-magic zone? She’ll be safe. And no other monster will come. It should be me.”
Lizzie starts to walk, determined to take the deal. But then she feels warm, soft fingers wraps around her wrist that tug her back.
Lizzie spins just a bit from the pull and in her momentum, Hope puts her hand on the back of her neck and pulls her down. It takes Lizzie a moment to realize that Hope’s lips are on hers and when she does, she doesn’t know exactly what to do. Well, she kisses Hope back— obviously— because this is a dream come true and Hope’s lips are soft and taste inexplicably like vanilla and she smells like the trees that surround the Salvatore school. Hope pulls back and looks up at her.
“You know I can’t let you do this, right?” Hope’s voice is low. It would almost be seductive if she didn’t sound so dangerous. Her fingers rest delicately on Lizzie’s jawline, as if Hope thinks she’s fragile.
“What are you going to do? Snap my neck and take the deal while I’m out?” Lizzie asks, voice just as soft.
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
Lizzie rolls her eyes but can’t help but smile. She quickly sobers, though. “The thing you’d do different, if Malivore didn’t exist, it would be being with me, wouldn’t it?”
Hope nods. “I think I’ve loved you longer than I’ve known.”
Lizzie hates how happy hearing that makes her. She hates how her whole body lights up and all she wants to do is kiss Hope again. She hates it because she knows she can’t have it. Not right now. Not while Hope is trying so desperately to leave again.
“You think you can tell me these things and then still take the deal?” Lizzie shakes her head.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” Lizzie can hear the sincerity in her voice.
“So you thought you’d just kiss me and then sacrifice yourself?” Lizzie places her hands around the back of Hope’s neck. “You thought that wouldn’t hurt me?”
Hope takes a deep breath and looks up at the sky. Lizzie narrows her eyes and then, impulsively, shoves Hope backward into the street.
“What the hell, Lizzie?” Hope asks, not realizing where she’s standing and so, not feeling the need to move.
“I’m sorry.” Lizzie spots the car coming from down the street. “But we both know you’d do the same to me.”
Hope furrows her brow and starts to ask “what” but that’s when she looks over and sees the car. But by then it’s too late for her to move.
#
The astonishment and relief on Hope’s face is something Lizzie will keep forever in her mind.
“I thought you were taking the deal.” she says. Of course. No demands for an explanation or an apology.
“I found a loophole.” Lizzie tells her. She closes the space between them and takes one of Hope’s hands. “Which is what I was trying to get through your thick wolf skull earlier. We’re not all as fragile as you think we are.”
Hope smiles at her. The Minotaur shakes.
“Do you want to finish this?” Hope asks her.
Lizzie shakes her head. “You go on and be the hero.”
Hope takes one of the broken branch pieces in her hand and plunges it through the Minotaur’s head. A second later they’re breathing in the familiar air of Mystic Falls in their own time.
#
There’s a slow song playing when they make it to the Decade Dance. Lizzie takes her hand and pulls her onto the dance floor, wraps her arms around Hope’s shoulders. They sway together like that for a moment before Lizzie speaks.
“Does this mean you’re going to stay? And tell everyone about you?”
“Do I have to tell them immediately?”
“I guess not.” Lizzie smiles suddenly. “Actually, it’ll be fun to have a mysterious girlfriend for a while.”
Hope smiles widely. “Girlfriend?”
Lizzie shrugs. “You wanted to do things differently this time, right?”
“Right.” Hope says.
Lizzie leans down to kiss her cheek and then she rests her forehead on Hope’s. Hope takes one of Lizzie’s arms off her shoulder and snakes her hand down to lace their fingers together.
“Hey,” Lizzie says quietly. “I’m glad you’re back.”