Chapter Text
Hope could never quite get the hang of dreams.
They were either invasively personal or devastatingly soul crushing, usually both.
Her dreams were never fun little inconsequential stories.
Even before she had turned off her humanity, there was never a dull moment in her sleep. Now that she had turned it back on, the dreams had simply increased in frequency. The atrocities she had committed played on-loop at night on the channel that was her mind. Hope missed when her nightmares where interspersed with fantasies of making-out with Lizzie in libraries, and closets, and various rooms around the school…And to think that younger Hope had thought those dreams to be the worst of their kind.
Lizzie.
If it weren’t for Lizzie, Hope would have run away in self-hatred and shame when her humanity came back on. Hope didn’t believe she deserved to live happily ever after surrounded by her loved ones. Just like she had feared, as soon as her humanity was turned back on, all her friends gladly welcomed her with open arms. It killed her inside to know that no one would be holding her accountable but herself. It was worse than being shunned and hated. It put more pressure on her, and her alone to atone for what she’d done. It wasn’t like she wanted to leave her home, but she had to for the good of the people she loved.
Lizzie was furious when she caught her trying to flee the school.
The heretic was mad that Hope would leave them without saying a word to anyone. Hope thought that she was exaggerating, it wasn’t like she was going to be gone forever. Hope wouldn’t abandon the school like that. Whenever the monster of the week would show up, Hope could just come back, kill it, then go back to whatever place she was holed up in. Hope could manage that much, but she couldn’t live in the same place as these people anymore.
That hadn’t placated Lizzie in the least. She was even angrier after Hope laid out her perfectly fool-proof plan.
(“I don’t give a shit about the school! You can’t just leave without saying goodbye. Imagine how my dad’s gonna feel. Or Cleo. Or MG. Or-or…”
Lizzie trailed off, with words left unsaid and angry tears threatening to spill out.
Hope difficultly swallowed the whirlwind of emotions trying to choke her, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was leaving. I just…I can’t help anybody like this. All I can think about is how unfair to them it is for me to stay. I’m a mess Lizzie. I’m angry at myself, and I’m angry at them for not being angry at me. I-”
Mirroring the other girl, Hope trailed off. She looked at the floor to avoid Lizzie’s stare.
“That’s…even worse. You’re not even leaving for yourself!? If you want to stay, then you should stay. Don’t leave just because you think it’s going to make our lives easier. I already told you, nobody is better off without you. Have you learned nothing from our ‘80s themed extravaganza?”
“Are you telling me to be selfish?”
“Yes! My god, yes.” Hope, who was having a staring contest with the floor, saw Lizzie’s socked feet come toe to toe with her boots. Lizzie grabbed her face. Hope relented and looked up at the taller girl. Lizzie leaned in until their foreheads touched. “Hope Andrea Mikaelson, for once in your life, please, just…live for yourself, and not for everyone else around you.”
“Okay.”
Lizzie’s eyes widened - the effect made even more comedic by how close they were to each other. “Really?” Lizzie whispered. Hope nodded slightly, making their noses bump against each other. “Wow, I didn’t think this would actually work. You usually never listen to anyone but yourself.”
Hope frowned, offended, “That’s not true, I-”
Lizzie ignored her protest and hugged her.
Lizzie pulled back before Hope could even reciprocate, “Thank God. I’ve never seen you this close up at this angle before. I mean except when we kissed at the- you know what, let’s not talk about that. Anyway, I have to say, it is not your best-looking angle. Don’t worry, you’re still hot. Enough chit-chat, get to your room young lady.”
Hope didn’t even know what to address first in that incredibly fast ramble.
“I’m…older than you.”
“Yes, but I’m taller, so it cancels out.”
“That’s not how that works.”
“Sure it is!”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”)
So, Hope stayed. And Lizzie stayed with her. Mostly because she didn’t trust her not to try and run away again. Which was a fair assumption to make. That night, Lizzie stayed up all night staring daggers at Hope. Every time Hope would shift in bed, Lizzie would stand up from her chair to scold her.
(“Don’t even think about it Mikaelson, I’m watching you!”
“What, so I’m not allowed to move now?”
“No. You forfeited that right when you tried to abandon me- us. I mean us.”
“Hey, Lizzie. Look, I’m waving at you. How does that make you feel?”
“Stop moving your hand right now, or I’ll magically glue it to the bed! I’m serious, Hope.”)
They spent the entire night bickering until the early hours of the morning. Lizzie eventually lost her fight against sleep and passed out in the chair next to her bed. Unable to find sleep herself, Hope had watched her (totally not creepily) and came to a realization. This had been the most healing moment she’d experienced since turning on her humanity. It was like putting a measly Band-Aid on a gaping wound, but it was still something. Hope believed it was because of the normalcy of it all. It was about how Lizzie was Lizzie, and the girl understood what Hope needed without her having to say anything.
Since coming back, Hope had had the bad habit of incessantly apologizing for no good apparent reason. Everyone would tell her that it wasn’t her fault and that she didn’t need to apologize. Hope knew it was the appropriate response to give, but it never made her feel better. Lizzie just forgave her. She didn’t ask why she was apologizing, or what she was apologizing for. She didn’t tell her that it wasn’t her fault. She’d say, ‘It’s okay’ and move on.
Hope felt she loved her all the more for it.
If Hope wasn’t so terrified of herself, she might have been able to tell Lizzie that.
Instead, Hope tried to tell her in everything she did, hoping it would be enough.
Since the night she had tried to run away, Hope never slept alone. Lizzie was always next to her. At first, both of them stumbled their way into excuses to justify spending their nights together. From ‘Keeping an eye on you’ to ‘I miss Josie’ and ‘I don’t want to be alone’, the more time went on, the less they felt the need to make excuses. Now, they wouldn’t even announce themselves when walking into each other’s rooms in the evenings. If anyone in the school thought it was weird that they waltzed out of each other’s rooms in the mornings, no one said a word about it. If Lizzie and her weren’t gonna talk about it, then neither should they.
Lizzie would kiss her sometimes.
Hope would kiss her sometimes too.
It wasn’t some calculated act either. It just happened. Last night, Hope said something brilliantly dumb just to annoy the other girl. Lizzie had done the face scrunch up that Hope loved so much, so she kissed her. Sometimes they’d get carried away, but one of them would break it off for fear of having to admit to something deeper. They’d lie next to each other with bated breaths and a string of dauting emotions on the tip of their tongues.
Unfortunately, her Lizzie-filled evenings always turned bittersweet when night came.
Nightmares haunted the both of them. Almost none of their nights were peaceful. Tonight, seemed to be Hope’s turn to suffer at the hands of dreams.
There was one particular event that her mind liked to torment her with.
The super-squad had effectively been able to make her turn her humanity back on through magically induced hallucinations. In the nightmare, Hope had to relive being humanity-less when she hallucinated.
It had started with Landon. No matter how much time went by, Hope still thought about him. The pain of losing him had slowly begun to shift to something more digestible. Lately, when she remembered something he did, or talked about him with someone, she’d feel this sort of nostalgia and fondness. She was starting to think that she’d keep the memory of him with her for the rest of her life. Hopefully, the many ghosts Hope was holding onto in her heart wouldn’t weigh her down until she broke. She was already hurting enough as it was all on her own. Whatever happened, Hope was of the mind that anything was better than not feeling anything at all again.
So, yes. It always started with Landon.
“Hope, are you okay?”
Dazed, Hope turned towards him. There he was. Landon Kirby in the flesh.
He sat up in the bed next to her. They were both in bed in her room.
“Yes. What time is it?” Hope asked softly, her eyes roaming the face she never thought she’d see again.
Landon gave her a confused look before looking down at his wrist.
He hummed sleepily, “I don’t know why I’m looking at my wrist, I’m not even wearing a watch. Hold on.”
He went to look at her alarm clock on the bedside table, but she stopped him by cupping his cheek. He frowned, seemingly confused by how she was acting, and covered her hand with his.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Hope tilted her head.
“No.” Hope opened the hand that wasn’t on his cheek. “I can’t feel anything.”
Something materialized in her palm and she plunged it in his stomach.
He had on the same devastated, but resigned expression he did when she killed him.
“You’re gonna have to try harder than that,” she taunted.
Hope blinked and she wasn’t in her room anymore.
Hope looked to her right and found out why.
“…The further I am from you, the emptier I feel. I hate that.”
She was in the motel room lying down next to Lizzie.
This was going to be more difficult.
Not because she had loved Landon less than she loved Lizzie, but because this particular memory came from a time when her humanity was off. More importantly, it was one of the moments when it had wavered. Even with her humanity off, these stupid hallucinations made her feel just as vulnerable as she had felt back in the motel room.
But Hope liked a good challenge.
“Where is it?” Hope felt her humanity trying to latch on to the slight opening in her defences. “The warmth.”
She anticipated Lizzie’s fingers brushing against her own. Hope let her hand be led to the other girl’s chest. Hope pressed her palm down where it had landed on the expanse of skin uncovered by Lizzie’s partially button-downed shirt. Dependable as ever, Hope could feel the heretic’s heartbeat reverberate against her hand. It was just as warm as she remembered it.
Hope followed Lizzie’s hand with her eyes when it slipped out from hers to fall back on the bed limply.
It was like she could still feel its hold on her jaw as Lizzie betrayed her.
“Lizzie.” The girl didn’t react, seemingly already asleep. “This is for snapping my neck.”
Hope dug her finger into Lizzie’s chest and ripped out her heart. The heretic didn’t even have time to open her eyes. Lizzie lay lifeless on the bed, her previously warm skin turning cold and gray. Hope averted her eyes.
“Try again,” Hope growled at the ceiling to no one in particular.
The warm heart in her hand disappeared, and she was left standing in a cemetery.
It was autumn. The sky was covered with clouds. The frigid seeped right through the coat she was wearing. Not that Hope could get any colder than she already was.
Two tombstones were in front of her – both gray and dull, with absolutely nothing remarkable to distinguish them from the hundred other graves neatly lined up in the cemetery. Hope knew this wasn’t where her parents were buried. Her subconscious had constructed these non-descript tombstones with the names Hayley Marshall and Niklaus Mikaelson etched onto them. This wasn’t even a memory. The hallucinations were starting to take creative liberties.
“Well, let’s get on with it then,” Hope said loudly to the wind.
She was alone, the maple tree next to her being her only company.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Hope slowly walked in circle, betting on where the hallucinations of her parents were going to pop out from.
“Mommy, daddy dearest? Come now, don’t be shy. We all knew it was going to come down to this.”
Silence.
An orange leaf fell from the tree, ripped away from the branch by the weather.
Starting to get annoyed, Hope quickly turned and kicked her father’s tombstone. It didn’t budge, still intact after its impact with her boot. Her toes should have been crushed by the blow, but she didn’t feel anything. It didn’t hurt.
“Where are you!? Let’s not pretend to be sensible about this now, show yourselves!”
Hope was yelling now.
More leaves fell down from the maple tree, beginning to dance around her.
“I said, fucking show yourselves!”
The wind picked up, whipping away at Hope’s skin. She growled and tried to conjure up her magic to trash the cemetery. It didn’t work, so she resorted to worthlessly punching the tombstones, trying to burry the names underneath her fists. The grey skies were overtaken by thunder and rain.
“Dad! Mom!”
Hope bellowed out as orange and red leaves circled her hunched over form.
“Where the fuck are you!?”
She punched her father’s tombstone to no avail.
“Where are you!?”
She slammed her palm into her mother’s tombstone.
“Where are you?”
She hit the cold ground beneath her.
“Where are you…”
They were gone.
They were dead.
And Hope couldn’t even hallucinate them.
They didn’t appear in her dreams.
They didn’t appear in her nightmares.
She would never see their faces again.
Hope screamed. The storm swallowed the sound as she broke down.
When Hope woke up in her room, she was crying. Her mouth was wide open, ready to scream, but only a deafening silence came out of it.
The wind from her dream had managed to steal her voice and make her hurt in silence.