Hey, it's been a while. For anyone wondering, yes I am still working on by summer's ripening breath, don't worry. I've just been a little preoccupied and so in the mean time there's this.
In light of the lack of strike-through options on , it looks pretty different than it would on ao3, but alas, not much I can do. I think it kind of adds to it in a way - opens up the idea of which note she might've sent, though I've elected for the last one; hence why it is last. But anyway.
Let me know what you think :)
Title:
"I sit alone in an empty house
Writing notes while I'm thinking 'bout
The few folks, I didn't let down
Oh, you got me walking ten miles high
Step off, see if I can fly
Don't care if I live or die, if I live or die."
- Misty, Caamp
Dear Hope
I want to hold you
Sometimes when Josie walks the trails near the woods, skirting passed the edge of the lake she'll see her.
The sun will glisten on the water and the wind will pull gently at every shakeable thing and Hope will lounge at the end of the dock, eyes closed and tears gently shimmering in the light; sparkling like diamonds as they slip free of her cheeks in breathless longing of the water.
It's the same longing that curls inside Josie's chest at the sight of her; so sad and yet somehow so beautiful within it.
She thinks Hope is the kind of person Shakespeare would've written about – someone beautiful but tragically so. Someone complicated and flawed and yet perfectly so. Someone lovely and yet terribly sad.
She thinks that Hope is the kind of person Josie would love to write about; if only she could find the words to describe her.
Hope
You're like a winter sunset
Hope doesn't eat with the rest of the students and hasn't for months and yet somehow only her absence has ever occurred to Josie. She's never thought to wonder where she hides or when she eats until she stumbles across her in the kitchen one night.
There's the rich scent of baked goods – something like doughnuts she thinks – wafting through the air, tempting her to enter but the sound; quiet shuffling and the choked breaths, little aborted sobs she hears tell her otherwise.
She watches through a crack in the door as Hope shuffles around the kitchen, setting square doughnuts in a small mountain on a plate and steadily dusting them with powdered sugar.
Her cheeks are flushed yet clear but Josie can still see the jump of her shoulders, the thick swallow of her misery trapped in her throat. Her eyes are frozen fire – crisp and burning, furiously bright and yet bitterly cold; like the life in them has been caught and set to shatter.
She sticks candles in her doughnuts – her beignets, Josie knows now – and at the broken murmur of her voice, Josie wonders if she should feel guilty, culpable, for her part in Hope's sadness.
"Happy birthday, Dad."
Dear Hope
I know it doesn't mean much but I'm sorry.
I'm sorry my family seems so intent on hurting you.
I'm sorry that you lost your mom.
I'm sorry that I helped kill your dad.
Hope takes off after classes one day and Josie's heart is steeped in relief even as it trembles with vicious rage and withers with guilt.
She slumps into a deceptively comfortable chair in her dad's office, blatantly ignoring the scolding edge of his stare as he looks pointedly to the hard-backed chair opposite his desk and sulkily pulls a pillow into her lap.
Dorian stands at the door, lingers for a moment after recapping her outburst. In the space of a few seconds the pair have what feels like an entire conversation in front of her with only their eyes before Dorian ducks out; leaving the headmaster to punish his daughter.
"Josie," Dr Saltzman says sternly but Josie doesn't look at him.
She can still hear the crunch of Hope's pencil snapping in her hands, the screech of her chair being shoved out of her desk at the shriek of the bell, the ominous words of their teacher as they read the chapter title – Klaus Mikaelson; the Great Evil.
"Josie," he says again.
"Yes Dr Saltzman?"
He reels a little like she's hit him and something turns in her chest, swelling like a wave of righteousness.
He looks hurt and Josie can't muster the will to care about it.
He never seems to care when he hurts them.
"Josie…I'm not just the Headmaster, I'm your father…and while I have to deal with your outburst according to the rules set in place in this school – I'd hoped you knew you could talk to me. About anything."
He comes out from behind his desk to lean against it, watching her carefully and she shrugs, looking away from him.
She doesn't think she can talk to him about this; about Klaus Mikaelson, about her guilt – about Hope.
She doesn't even know what she'd say.
Hope,
your winter eyes
sad and soft
touch gently
the souls in your sight
i wonder would your lips
do the same
should they ever meet mine
Hope doesn't participate in the school talent show.
She's not considered one of the witches even though she shares most of her classes with them and is shunned by the wolves for not submitting to the pack. The vampires won't even entertain the idea of her. Hope doesn't seem at all bothered by it; apparently happy to drift on her own, not belonging to any one group but it bothers Josie.
It's the first time she really thinks about how lonely Hope must be.
First she was on the run, not even able to keep her name – always Hope Marshall and never Hope Mikaelson.
Then she loses her parents and is shipped back to school away from the rest of her family.
Then she's outed as the only one of her species in existence – if Tribrids can even be considered a species with only one ever existing.
Hope is alone a lot – mostly by choice – but it's the first time it occurs to Josie that even if Hope wanted to belong somewhere…there wouldn't really be a place for her to go.
Josie tumbles off the stage halfway through their number and is quietly escorted to the infirmary by her father. Lizzie rocks up to her bedside not a minute later, and Josie winces as her own headache rebounds into her through Lizzie's part of the bond.
Her sister interrogates her with a strange look in her eyes, relenting only when Josie plays the concussion card. She disappears back to their room with a look, promising Josie the topic will be picked up again later. Josie hopes it isn't – prays to God that Lizzie forgets. She's not sure how she'll be able to explain herself.
How can she possibly explain that she'd caught Hope mouthing the words and gotten swept up into thoughts about her lips; the shape of her mouth?
How does she tell Lizzie she fell off the stage because she was too busy thinking about kissing Hope?
i'm in love with the sun
the moon, the stars
the sun of her smile
the moonlight on her skin
the stars in her eyes
Lizzie finds her notebook and something recoils in Josie's chest at the sight of it dangling from her graceless fingers. She hasn't read it, Josie can tell just by looking at her – because as much as Lizzie might prod and poke and carve her way into spaces she was never meant for, she'd never violate Josie's trust, her privacy, like that.
It doesn't stop the way her heart races – every inch of her tight and coiled in anxiety.
She's flippant as she explains that it slipped out of Josie's backpack as she disappeared from class and there's some relief as it finds its way back into Josie's hands; like some dark secret is finally safe in the shadows where it belongs as she tucks it away in a locked drawer of her desk.
The relief dissipates the moment Lizzie opens her mouth.
Lizzie knows.
She knows about Hope – about Josie's hovering and her staring and the way she wants to be around her. Josie doesn't think she's quite put it together – that it's not just some drone-syndrome that's curled its way around her bones and leeched the independence from her brain, but love; that has made her mindless.
(Or what she thinks love is anyway).
"You certainly seem obsessed with her," Lizzie says and Josie thoughtlessly replies – quick as a whip, and just as biting as she cuts into Lizzie where the wounds are already laid bare and festering.
"How could I be obsessed with someone who says such awful things about my twin?"
just a drop
in the ocean of your eyes
just a careless whisper
on the breeze
i am one of them
your bitter tears
your winter trees
She scrawls her feelings out in verse – stumbling and guilty, adrenaline rushing through her veins and leaving her brash and bold and thinking herself somehow justified.
It's brave, she thinks; trying to ignore the image of Lizzie crumbling, curling in on herself at the idea that Hope had outed her mental illness to the whole school.
It's her duty, she thinks; trying to ignore the fear that swells at the memory of Hope's self-imposed isolation.
She can't just harbour feelings for someone and never let them know; it's wrong.
It's selfless, she tells herself, thinking about how she's offering herself up as an option, and wilfully ignoring the truth of her own selfishness.
In the moment, awash with impulse and self-import – it seems like a good idea.
In the aftermath, it's decidedly not.
The note disappears out of view of the door and the panic rushes in.
She falters.
It's not brave or bold to impose her feelings on someone. It's brash and unnecessary and uninvited. Hope is grieving and Josie is riding an adrenaline high of guilt – having probably just ruined whatever standing Hope might've had with Lizzie – and all of it for her own selfish feelings.
Leaving the note is just more of the same.
And perhaps she should wait – maybe she should ride out the consequences of her actions, but the idea is terrifying – the brash, impulsiveness not quite quelled within her as she spits a spell under Hope's door and disappears to the deceptively victorious rank of smoke.
sometimes in the night
when i hear the soft snuffles
of your weeping breath
i think of climbing in beside you
of being one with your bones
with the knobs of your spine
so when atlas rises in the dawn
i can help hold the girl
who holds the world