Work Text:
Hope doesn't go home often. Sometimes she thinks she doesn't even really know what home is.
Home was her mom, and at times her dad. The strongest tie she's ever had to a home, to a person was with her mom. Who help her when she cried about her dad and was always there when she was scared. And she'd loved New Orleans in a lot of ways. And even now, she has good memories of it, still. But most of those memories are with her mom. A few with her dad.
Sure, she has memories with Auntie Bex and Freya, Uncle Kol and Marcel. And she loves all of them so much. And she loved New Orleans. Loved the parades with her mom and the beignets and learning magic with Auntie Freya.
But her mom died, and her dad died. Even Uncle Elijah. And she didn't go back home the first break after, and then she didn’t go back home for the second, and then the third. At first, she was just so deep in the loss and grief that going back felt impossible, every corner and building a reminder of something lost. And it didn't help that she could feel the weight of her family's grief in every interaction over the phone.
So she didn't go home. And it just became easier not to. She didn’t mean for it to become a thing, to avoid them all long term, but it felt too hard every time, and it just became the norm to not go back. Going back was too hard. She did go home once or twice, even though it never really felt like home anymore, but even after she was through the hardest part, and had started to come to terms with it all as much as she could, it just felt... lonely.
She had Rebekah and Marcel and Freya and Keelin, but no amount of hugs and family speeches could ever make up for the fact that her mom wasn't there. She'd gotten used to her dad not being there as a kid. She wanted him to be, and she foughnt for it, but it's not usually her dad that she feels the loss of so heavily in New Orleans. She feels it everywhere, just like with her mom, but even though New Orleans was his in a lot of ways, he’s not the one she feels missing in every conversation and situation when she’s back in there, back home. Because her mom was the main person who made it a home, even when her dad was so far away and unreachable. Her mom was always there. Her mom is still who she misses when she needs to talk, when she needs reassurance and hugs, no matter where she is. She’s the first person she wanted to tell when things with Landon became real. She’s the one Hope wanted to talk to when she felt betrayed by Landon that first time, when she actually started to make friends at school, when good things happened in her life and when bad things did. Every new thing reminded her that she couldn’t tell her mom about it. And overtime the pain lessened, wasn’t as awful and all consuming, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt every time it hit her again that there was yet another thing she couldn’t tell her mom about. New Orleans doesn’t feel like home anymore because her mom was the one who made it home .
And she has people, now, even outside of her family. People who have become her family, too. Like Lizzie and Josie and Landon and Rafael and MG. But she still feels the grief, knows that she always will. And she still thinks about her mom every time she feels something that she knows she would've gone to her for before.
And it's worse back home, in a town that her mom loved and put so much into. (She knows her dad did too, but for as much as she misses him, he wasn’t there . Not most of the time, and it’s something she sometimes hates herself for thinking about. He sacrificed himself for her, but he also avoided her for years, and sometimes she thinks about that too, and it just makes her feel so guilty.) Sometimes, Hope thinks it doesn't quite feel like a home. But nothing else could ever hurt so much, and she knows, deep down, that nowhere else will ever feel as much like home. As much like family. As much like her dad, for all that he put into it, and as much like her mom .
Her mom who was home, who was the main constant in her life for so long when her dad and her aunts and uncles were gone and she was pushing everyone else away. She did her fair share of pushing her mom away, too, but Hayley was always, always there when she needed her, even when she didn't want her there.
New Orleans, sometimes, feels like guilt. Not just loss, but blame. Because everything that she's lost, every death, still feels like her fault, sometimes. A lot of the time. Especially her mom. And for every reminder, she's reminded too that her mom could still be alive, still be with her, if Hope hadn't done what she'd done, made the choice she made. But she did, and her mom died .
And Hope never got to introduce her to Landon, or to Lizzie and Josie and MG and Rafael. To her friends . To her family .
Her mom didn't get to see her fall in love or learn to let people in, to make that family of her own with her closest friends. She didn't get to be there to see her turn into a wolf for the first time and to hold her hand through it. Because as much as she appreciates her dad being there, she wishes it could've been both of them. Like it should’ve been. Like it could’ve been if she hadn’t lost her mom . (If she hadn’t caused it all.)
Neither of her parents will be there when she graduates or when she gets her first job or when she dies and turns into a vampire. They won’t be there to hold her hand and to tell her it’ll be okay and to help her adjust. She won't get to talk to her mom about what she wants to do with her life or who she wants to be in the long run, and it hurts and it aches, deep inside. Even though she's grown, and she knows she has, even though she can let people in now and she has plenty of happy times too, her grief is still there, in small ways sometimes and big ways other times, and it still sits so so heavy on her shoulders when one of their birthdays come around, or when her own does. Sometimes on a full moon or when she almost loses someone else, or even on a random Monday, she's overcome with it. There may be more good days than bad, now, but she knows that she'll never fully be over it. She can go to New Orleans now and appreciate the happy moments, but it’s still far more sad.
Because in every corner, there's a story, a memory. The restaurants she went to with her mom, the roads she walked down holding her hand. Not all of the memories are good, and not all of them are bad, but they all ache in a way. And it's something she can handle, but it still hurts, and her grief overall is just still so much worse in New Orleans. There will always be things she loves about it, but for her own sake, sometimes Hope knows she just has to stay away. She hopes that eventually it won't feel quite so heavy. She thinks she'd really like to show Landon around, eventually. To all of the places she used to love and the town that she will always call home, even if it’s not quite the same anymore (even if it’s not her only home anymore). It'll take time, but she hopes she'll get there. Because New Orleans will always be a part of her, always and forever, in the same way that her parents always will. And one day she hopes that her home, that the place that her dad built, that the place her mom helped to rebuild and that both of her parents worked to make better for her won't hurt so much.