Work Text:
Hope wakes up in her bed, but not her bed in Mystic Fall. He head hurts and it takes almost a minute to place where she is. Not in her room at the Salvatore School, or even the guest bedroom in Rebekah and Marcel’s house in New York. She’s home, in New Orleans. She can hear Aunt Freya in the library, whispering furiously to Aunt Rebekah, but even with her new vampire hearing, she can’t quite make out what they’re saying. It’s about her, obviously. About her “crisis.” Whatever. She doesn’t have to be here, and they can’t keep her here.
She doesn’t spare a glance towards any of the things left untouched in her bedroom. Her jewelry box or posters or bedspread exactly where she left them. She hasn’t been back home, to her father’s fortress that he built to protect himself from Mikael, fortified to protect her, since he died, and anything she wanted was in her room at the Salvatore School. She had spent the few summers and holidays she had in New York. She hates this place, in the only way she could now — distantly, bitterly, resentful that her family thought bringing her home could sway her, change her, make her feel.
Last night she did feel. Panic, sharp and real, her magic bubbling inside of her. If she wants to win, to save the school, to save herself, she has to turn it back on, to feel again. Feel it all again. She feels something, alright. Dread. Terror. Knowing she could die if she doesn’t, knowing it might be worse if she does. But she can’t fight from in here. Not on the other side of the country.
She slams into a barrier at her bedroom threshold. Freya is there in an instant, like she was just waiting for it. “Hi, darling,” she says softly. “This is…eh, call it an intervention.”
“Call it whatever you want,” Hope snaps. “Let me out. Trust me. You can ask Rebekah if you can beat me in a fight.”
“You snuck up on her, it doesn’t count,” Freya says coolly. “We’re not going to…starve you out, or torture you, but you have to stay here. For a little while.”
“I don’t think you can bore me into turning my humanity back on,” Hope says, sinking to the floor. “I’m a Mikaelson witch like you, Freya. I can get out of here, even if it takes all night.”
“Okay,” Freya says. “Let me know if you want to talk, or if you need anything.” And with that she disappears back into the depths of the house.
Hope sets to work, but it’s a more complicated spell than she bargained for. Hope is smart and powerful and talented. But she hasn’t exactly been keeping up with her education, and she can tell within a few seconds, this boundary spell will take a lot of work. Ingredients that aren’t in her stupid childhood bedroom. A frame of mind she can’t access, because she knows that the loophole is she’ll have to ask for help, and for that kind of help to be given, she’ll have to turn her humanity back on. And that trick she pulled with LIzzie…her family’s not stupid. She’s a good enough liar, but not that good. The power of friendship and a few crocodile tears aren’t going to fool them.
“I could help.”
“Dammit.” Hope turns to face herself, the annoying, prudish, sympathetic version of herself, who is wearing a denim jacket instead of a fucking leather one. Logically, this should upset her way more than it is. Her psyche is splintering. Good Hope. Evil Hope. Like she was ever as nice as the version that’s in front of her. She was, at best, upset about how belligerent and mean she could be. “Would you leave me alone?”
“Would you stop being so stubborn?” Good Hope sits cross-legged in front of her on the ground. “This is inevitable. I am inevitable. And you know it.”
Hope turns her back on herself. “You’re not even real,” she scoffs. “I mean, not just in a lost my marbles and I’m hallucinating kind of way. You’re not even me. I was never Good Hope, or whoever the hell you’re supposed to be. So leave me alone.” Probably, she can brute force her way through Freya’s spell. It’ll take more time, but she has all the time in the world, and stuck in here, whatever the gods have planned for her, she won’t be in Mystic Falls to be there for it. So who cares.
“Okay, keep telling yourself that,” Good Hope scoffs right back. “But it’s going to take power you don’t have to bust through Aunt Freya’s spell.” Hope rolls her eyes, but Good Hope won’t stop talking. “Seriously, you don’t feel it? You’re not at your full strength.”
Hope tries her best to ignore her, but she’s right. Beside her head, she feels…off. Weak. Shaky. A little dizzy. Each time she tries to bust through the boundary, her vision blurs a little more. “Stop it,” she mutters at the same time as that other, seriously annoying version of herself. “Seriously. Stop it.”
Confused. Her hero alter ego can’t be doing anything to her. She keeps going, her vision a pinprick. One more, her breath catching, “S-stop…” she insists weakly.
She collapses in a heap by the door, no closer to busting out.
This time when she wakes up, Freya is sitting beside her, holding her hand. When Hope opens her eyes, Freya sits straighter. “Hope? How are you feeling?”
Hope closes her eyes. “What did you people do to me?” she grumbles. She feels terrible, like her blood is full of glass.
“It’s the boundary spell,” she says simply. “I’m sorry, Hope. I’m really, truly sorry. It will wear off but if you try to punch your way through it again, you’ll…it will just keep happening.”
“You said no torture,” Hope complains.
“Now you know,” Freya says. “You’ll only be torturing yourself. Can I get you anything?”
“Sure,” Hope says to the back of her eyelids. “Calendula.” The one ingredient she needs that she doesn’t have for the spell.“
“Nice try.” Freya laughs a little. “I mean food, tea. Beignets?”
“Tempting,” she grunts, opening her eyes trying to push herself up into a sitting position. She’s angry. Angry at everything, the deceit, for the pain. For the whole universe out to get her.
“Hope, please.” Freya is practically is begging her, but Hope is stubborn, so she stands, her legs shaking with the effort, sweating and shaking. Her stupid alter ego is leaning against the back wall, smirking at her, looking through her old jewelry. “I know this has been hard.”
“Hard?” she snaps. “It’s not hard! It’s been freaking impossible!” She’s crying again, her brain working too hard to keep her upright to stop the feeling. “Everyone I have ever loved has died. And I’ve been the one to kill them. I thought, I was starting to think —” She coughs and her vision swims, graying out. Freya stays perfectly still on Hope’s bed but stupid, pedantic, annoying Hope pushes herself off the wall to come stand next to her, so when her vision clears they’re standing shoulder to shoulder. “I’m evil! I come from bad blood!” Freya flinches but she doesn’t move, her expression doesn’t change otherwise. “I’m just — this is me! This was always going to be me!” She feels it. This is what’s inevitable about her, not that stupid lovesick girl who’s frowning at her. This is the only legacy centuries of evil could leave behind. And not just her dad, her mom —she’s killed people, given in to her own wants and needs. Oh they wanted something for Hope, something different. But she isn’t any different. She’s just like them. She’s like all of them. She’s crying, wheezing between sobs. She wipes her tears. Other Hope, the Hope who hadn’t lost Landon, reaches out to put and hand on her arm and Hope screams. It rattles the house down to its foundation. “I’m not her! I’m never going to be her! She wasn’t strong enough and she won’t be! I — I can’t be —!” She can see herself from the outside, no two Hopes standing in her bedroom, just her, screaming and crying at her aunt and her stupid torture device boundary spells to keep her dangerous magic contained. She is dangerous. How could she be anything but dangerous? At least this way, she’s strong too.
Freya is cool, hands folded on her lap, watching Hope. “Hope, you’re still weak from the spell,” she says calmly, and Hope scream again. She’s in agony. She wants everyone to stop caring about her, to leave her alone. She wants to rip her hair from her skull, her eyes from her face, claw the skin from her whole body until she is no one’s little girl. Until she feels like the monster that she is inside. She’s monstrous and she knows the little harm done to her with Freya’s boundary spell was for her own. But she doesn’t want it. She wants it to end. Like when the Hollow was inside of her, when it was in her father, hungry for her, begging her with the call of magic that could kill her, kill other people. She’s broken. She’s — she’s —
“I wish I was dead,” she chokes out. “And now, I can never die. But Landon, Dad, Mom…everyone is going to die. Even you, one day. Rebekah wants to take the cure, some day. I just wish — I wish I was just dead.” Her admission sucks the air from the room. Freya doesn’t dare to breathe and Hope is sobbing. She killed Landon, she killed her mom and dad. Without her humanity, everyone could see her for what she was — a monster. But she doesn’t want to be a monster. She wants to be a little girl, meeting her father for the first time and seeing nothing but the man who suffered for her, who let himself be chained and starved for five years to save everyone, who would keep himself on the other side of the planet from her forever, to keep her safe. She saw him — uncertain and as timid as she felt, and strong enough to keep everyone he loved safe. She wanted to love him and he wanted to love her, and that was enough. He loved her magic and she loved his art. She wants to be her, the little girl hugging her father for the first time, her arms around his neck, feeling his old heart beat against her young one, let him carry her back to the house. She was safe. She didn’t know that he gave her all his ugliness too. She was only a little girl, and he was only her father. Hope collapses on her bed. She’s freezing, feverish, and Freya gives her a little of the thing she misses most of all, rubbing her shoulder, brushing her hair from her eyes.
“Oh, Hope,” she sighs. “I know what it feels like. I do. I promise. But this moment is going to pass, darling. I know it feels eternal. But you are so loved, and you aren’t evil. Or broken. You’re just…prickly.” Hope almost laughs, and Freya shifts them, so Hope is, in one second, back under the covers in her bed, Freya sitting up against the headboard, rubbing her back. She feels like a little girl, being rocked to sleep with the lullaby of her aunt’s voice. “One day, you’ll wake up and you’ll be so happy, and you’ll think back on all of this like it was a bad dream. I promise, sweetie. I promise.”
Hope is still crying, her tears soaking her hair and her pillowcase, but for a moment that’s long enough for her to fall asleep, she feels safe, can even almost imagine that future. Not the future she thought she’d have when she was eight or even fifteen, different but lovely. When she wakes up, still in New Orleans, that other Hope is gone.