A/N: I also posted this piece of sin on Ao3 if you want a better reading format, BUT let me explain. Nothing really underage happens here, trust me, Hope is old enough when shit goes down. This is about exploring their dynamic and what it could lead to. I hope you enjoy it. Ummm, live long and trash?

I cut myself upon the thought of you

And yet I come back to it again and again

/

For her sixteenth birthday, he gives her pearls, sixteen strings to match her growth. They hang heavy around her throat and fall down all the way to her knees. It looks like she's dressed in rosaries.

"They belonged to a witch who was dear to me," Marcel tells her as she sways back and forth, making the pearls clack. She fingers them with relish. They are the color of sticky amber. She remembers traveling with Freya to Spain to look at fossils preserved in tree sap, useful for resurrection spells. This reminds her of that.

"She told me not to let'em go to waste in the attic," he adds with the hint of a smile.

Hope looks up at him with a grin. "I'll wear them at breakfast tomorrow, dad will go mental."

"Does he know you're back from school?"

"Nope," Hope beams. "You were my first stop."

Marcel sits with this news of preferential treatment like it's a piece of lead in his stomach. Hope runs to him, quick as a bird, and pulls him into a hug, crushing the pearls against his chest.

"Thank you, Marcel! This is the best gift!"

He embraces her with one arm while the other hangs behind him, as if to hold her so complete would be wrong. He feels the pulse of her heart between them and he leans his head on her shoulder briefly. She smells like summer thunders, coming before a storm.

At age eleven, she teaches him the finger kiss.

"When Mom and I want to put some love away, we do this," she explains with childish logic, pressing the tip of her fingers to her lips and bringing them forward.

Marcel indulges her. He presses his fingers to his lips, and then reaches out and touches Hope's.

"It's kind of like magic," she muses, looking at his hands, the smooth dark skin puckered here and there by light scars.

"Is it?" he asks, letting her thumb map the craters of his palm.

"Mhm. Whenever you're sad or lonely, just touch your fingers to your lips and you'll remember me. I'll do the same."

"I don't want you to be sad or lonely, though," he says, looking over her shoulder at the darkening sky. It's getting late and Hayley hasn't come to pick her up yet, and he secretly hopes she'll stay away a bit longer. It's the best kind of feeling, sitting out here on the terrace, inhaling the scent of late-blooming hyacinths.

"Well," she pauses, dangling her feet from the chaise-longue, "I don't think you can stop that."

I wish I could, he thinks. It's so very impractical, to wish that you could take away the suffering of children. He knows that she doesn't really like going away to school for half a year. He knows she gets homesick. And sometimes, he dreams of driving to Mystic Falls and whisking her off on a surprise trip to the bayou. But that would be overstepping his boundaries, since she's not his family, not in that way. He has to make-do with her holiday visits.

"But this'll help," she promises, pressing her fingers to her lips.

He does the same.

They touch fingers.

She's nine when she watches him dive into the sea. She's sitting on the edge of the wharf, her feet tucked under her, shivering under a Daffy Duck towel.

Aunt Bekah calls her back to the shore where it's warmer and the currents don't nip at her skin. But she shakes her head stubbornly, determined to watch him.

He parts the waters like a question, as if he were asking permission. He is gentle with the waves. He knows he's only a visitor, he doesn't insult the sea.

Hope dips her toe in the water and waves at him, although she doesn't think he can see her.

His head is crowned with sunrays as he emerges from the sea.

At fourteen, she sees his figure - always so full and yet so graceful - walking down the foyer towards the staircase. He catches her look with a mischievous wink.

Hope inhales sharply and turns back to her father who is sitting in an armchair, holding up reproductions of famous paintings for her to recognize.

She's gotten very deft at it over the years. They come to her like second nature. She drones on the names, while her mind wonders elsewhere. Marcel stops to speak to Aunt Bekah and she kisses him on the cheek.

"Tiziano, El Greco, Velasquez…"

Klaus clicks his tongue. "What's that you said?"

Hope frowns, staring at the foggy image before her. So many dark browns and violent reds. Like her aunt's lips. "Oh…sorry, that's a Goya?"

"Are you asking me or telling me?" Klaus admonishes, flipping the page.

"Why do I have to remember all these dead people?"

Her father points at himself sourly. "I am dead too, love."

"Yeah, but you're still here and you're not going anywhere."

Klaus nods. "And neither are these paintings. Now, let's start over. I don't want you to get another name wrong."

Hope heaves a sigh. Her dad really doesn't like that the Mystic Falls curriculum doesn't include history of art. He wants her to have a rounded education, even if he has to do it himself. She is assuaged by the thought of complaining to Marcel. They'll laugh about it together.

But she wonders if he kissed Aunt Bekah back.

She's fifteen and fallen asleep on his couch, her tangled legs pushing aside his papers. He crouches down to collect them from the floor. But he stays there for a while, kneeling in front of her dreaming body. She is a fitful sleeper, prone to all sorts of moods. She tosses and turns and mumbles and growls, a little wolf without claws and fur. No doubt, she's having an argument. She told him, in so many words, that she was sent home early from school because she used magic on one of the male students. She wouldn't say why, she wouldn't even tell him what happened, but she made him promise he'd keep it a secret.

Has he ever refused her?

"Dad would flip. He'd want to find the poor kid and kill him. I can't have him on my conscience."

"I heard you already did a number on him," Marcel teased, watching her face glow with pride, freckles shining wickedly. She loves to have her powers acknowledged.

Her sleeping face is solemn now. She looks young, too young.

There's no humor on his lips. He wishes he could find out what happened. His imagination can't help but fill in the blanks. She's growing up, slowly becoming a young woman, and perhaps the other sex has noticed too. It would be folly to deny she's a lovely girl.

Lovely. A worthless description. She is like a piece of happiness, melting butter on toast, a glass of grape juice (her favorite), teeth stained by coral lipstick. And this adolescent universe has been disturbed. He just doesn't know how. And it shouldn't occupy his thoughts so, he shouldn't want to find that boy and have a little chat with him, he's not Klaus.

But perhaps, in making him, Klaus imparted something of his punitive character.

Still, he stops himself. He's never felt violent urges towards the young. Hope can take care of herself. She has so many people who love her…

Her arms rise above her head, riding the T-shirt up her belly, exposing soft flesh that hasn't been touched by life. He can almost see the unculled blood blooming underneath.

Marcel rises quickly. He should cover her with a warm blanket. It's grown colder since Halloween. But somehow, he stalls the moment. He doesn't cover her. He goes to sit at his desk where the werewolf border reclamations await his perusal. He lets her sleep like that, open to the world. From time to time, he lifts his head to see if she is still dreaming.

(At twelve, she figures they're brother and sister. If Klaus made Marcel what he is, and if he also made her (the biology of which she's surreptitiously learnt from the internet, between giggles and fits), then they share blood. Some part of her is inside him, and some part of him is inside her. And their commonality is her dad. It all works out. They're family. There's never going to be anything wrong with family.)

She's thirteen and he's carrying her in his arms, his arms wrapped around her fairy body as she's crying bubbly tears against his chest.

"I'm okay, it doesn't hurt too bad," she sniffs, trying to be brave.

Of course she pushed herself too hard. She wants to be like Aunt Freya and master the nine hollow spells before she turns sixteen. They're a complicated set of incantations that require significant blood loss. Even Davina had trouble with them, he remembers with a murmur of the heart.

Her puckish nose is streamed with red.

His thumb wipes the trail above her lips and she chokes on a sob.

"I'm so weak."

He pulls her chin towards him. "Listen to me. You're very stupid. But never weak. You're one tough kid."

"I am?" she wonders, tasting blood on her lips. The smell of it tickles the back of his spine.

"Take it from someone who knows," he says, remembering his battered youth.

Hope wants to ask him what he means, but Hayley takes her from his arms and tells her daughter she should be lucky she's not dead.

She's dragged away to receive her punishment, and the last image she has is of Marcel, clenching his fists which are stained with her blood.

She's fourteen and a half and she goes shopping with Aunt Bekah for a formal dress to wear at Aunt Freya's wedding.

Hope doesn't like any of the gowns she tries on. They're too stuffy, or too sheer, too gaudy or too simple. Nothing pleases her. She feels like hell. She's too young to resent her aunt, too young to pretend she's not jealous.

She asks obliquely, while Bekah buys them ice-creams, if she's bringing a date to the wedding.

"What makes you ask that, pumpkin seed?"

Hope covers her nose briefly. Are her freckles that orange? Do they look ugly in this light? Why does she care? Why is everything so antagonistic?

"Just wondering. I saw…I think maybe Marcel wants to go with you."

Her aunt issues a sharp laugh. "Playing matchmaker, are you?"

Hope sinks her teeth into the cold strawberry cream and draws back, moaning in pain.

Later, as they finally settle on a delicate but far too pink spaghetti dress, Rebekah says, more to herself than her, "Some bonds never break, but they're full of cracks, so it's best to let them sleep."

Hope spends the whole evening trying to decipher the words, but by the eve of the wedding she's forgotten all about it and spends her time fiddling with her hair in front of the mirror. She feels gauche, like she's overgrown everything. She wants to lock herself in her room and just sleep. Maybe that way her freckles will disappear.

She finds a text from Marcel on her phone.

Blue or black, what do u think?

There are two photos attached. Two coat-jackets resting against his wardrobe.

It's not the first time he's asked her opinion even though she's hardly the fashion expert. But she's always honest, which he appreciates.

She lies down on her bed and stares at the photos. She's never been to his bedroom but the small glimpses she's seen leave her wondering about his sheets, what color they are, if they rustle when he lies against them. She plays with the hem of her shirt, skirting her thighs.

U there?

Yeah. Blue.

I like the black better, he texts back and she rolls her eyes.

Wear blue for me.

He doesn't text back with a reply.

She's fourteen and a half and Keelin and Freya look so happy as they duck under the sea of rice which rains down on their heads. The brides twirl their dresses in the courtyard and the guests throw red confetti. Hope is sitting at the balcony, holding her arms around one of the pillars, wishing that her pink dress didn't itch. Rebekah is dancing with an older man she's never seen before. He's got his hand low on her back, a gesture that communicates intimacy. At least, this is what the girls at school tell her. You can't let him touch your ass, but if his hand lingers on the small of your back, it's love.

Her father isn't exactly pleased, judging by the way he's sniffing the air.

Hope realizes, with a small grin, that Bekah's suitor is probably a werewolf.

Marcel walks in, wearing blue.

Hope leans forward until her hair spills in front of her eyes.

She looks as if she could cascade from that height straight into the wedding party.

Nothing matters at seventeen except kicking back with a strong dose of witch hazel. It's supposed to open your third eye (ha) and make your bones tingle. Mostly, she feels spaced out and hungry. Angie, her official BFF, slipped her a special hellebore root which is supposed to really "fuck you up", her words exactly.

She lies in the bathtub in her bra and undies and opens her magic channels. It's a little bit like slitting your wrists, except not suicidal. She pours a mixture of herbs on the slip of paper and rolls it under her fingers.

The smoke rises to the ceiling in lazy curls.

It doesn't take long for the smell to spread even if she's opened a window.

She hears footsteps walking towards the bathroom.

Shit. "Aunt Freya?" she asks hopefully, because if it's her mom she is absolutely fried.

The door parts slowly and - it's not who she expected.

"Is something burning – Jesus."

Hope grips the edge of the tub. "Marcel."

He's standing frozen in the doorway, unable to look away, but unwilling to look her in the eye either. He stares helplessly out the window.

"I – I was coming to see your dad and I smelled smoke."

"Shh, don't tell on me, I'm being careful," she simpers, trying to hold back a giggle. The witch hazel is going straight to her fucking toes. She feels like floating. Her pupils are dilated, her eyes look black in the afternoon light.

And she's afraid he'll go away before she can tell him she longs – she longs for something. She rises quickly from the tub, wanting him to see.

And he does. He does see.

For a few unbearable moments, he sees more of her than he should have. He absorbs her curves like a sickness.

"Marcel, wait, I gotta tell you something…"

She runs after him, a mermaid on land with red hair and shimmering freckles, and he slams the door in front of her.

At eighteen, Marcel doesn't come to her birthday party and she's heartbroken. Her father has to drive out the guests with a temper tantrum. Hope thanks him for covering for her.

"I demand to know what's wrong with you," he tells her as she's eating cake alone in the kitchen. "You were excited about the festivities."

Hope shrugs, dipping her fork in the frosting. "I guess I'm depressed."

Klaus rolls his eyes. "I miss the good old days when we simply called it self-indulgence."

"Don't start, Dad. You know I got my mood from you," she snips back.

But they share a wry, familiar smile.

"May I join you?"

"Hey, you paid for it," she teases, handing him a plate.

"Is this," he winces, "about some dolt of a boy? Don't think I haven't noticed you've grown up."

"Because girls can only be upset over boys?" she asks with an arch in her voice.

Klaus scoffs. "Then enlighten me."

She bites her bottom lip until it stings. "I want us to always be together. You know, like you and mom always say, we don't leave anyone behind. Family is family."

Her father cocks his head to the side in that irritating way of his which makes her think he can read her mind.

"What gave you the idea any of us are separating?"

She rolls her eyes. "Not you."

"Then who, pray?"

"I don't know," she sighs, "I guess it's a general feeling I have that things are going to change and nothing will ever be the same."

Klaus nods in understanding. "Growing up has that effect on you. But you'll find change can be good."

She snorts. "Sorry, Dad, but that sounds fake."

He looks positively affronted. "Must you use that teenage slang around me?"

Hope laughs. "It's not slang, it's just a saying. You should get out more. When is the last time you've been on a date?"

This topic always has the quality of making him shy and surly, but it's a perfect way to steer the conversation away from her.

She'd rather not dwell on change. She doesn't want to grow up, not if it means Marcel will leave her.

She's seven and they sit together on a bench in the middle of the French Quarter and they let the music and the voices wash over them. They're two statues, guarding the same treasure, and no one can touch them.

"Are you my friend?" She hopes that he knows he doesn't have to be. She freed him because she it was right. But he could walk away right now and she would not blame him. She's not asking…she's not asking him for anything in return. Because she knows that's what her daddy would do, her daddy collects debts, and everyone owes him something. And though she's too young to understand all of this, a part of her that will never change, a part of her that is timeless, senses the truth. That in this world, people can never be yours by force. They leave, and you can't stop them.

"If you want me to be," he murmurs with a soft smile and extends his hand.

Hope's eyes become bright like lanterns. She is the quarter's sole source of energy.

(Eighteen and a half and she sleeps at night draped in sixteen rows of pearls.)

Eighteen and a half and he's parked his car in front of her school.

Hope is sleepy with classes, she's not really paying attention anymore, she's only thinking about college and getting out of Mystic Falls and NOLA and going to New York and losing herself in a throng of people who have no idea what she's like, what she can do.

Marcel stands sheepishly in front of the Mercedes with a gift bag, and all the other girls whisper that she's so lucky.

Hope hates how good he looks, how fitting that shirt is on him, how much taller he seems when he's only five feet away.

"Care for a ride?" he asks affably, like she's not upset with him, like she's already forgiven him. That's his bit of magic. The heartfelt, infectious way he has with people. That's how he keeps winning her dad over, that's why stiff and proper Uncle Elijah laughs at his jokes. He gets under your skin.

They drive in silence out of town, the woods casting lurid shadows across the road. Everything is a mirror for what's inside her. Her birthday present lies on the backseat. She's taken a peek and it looks like a brand new Grimoire. Her father thinks she's too young to start one, but what does he know?

"I missed you," she says, looking out the window.

Marcel keeps driving in silence.

"Say it. Say you missed me too," she almost pleads, like a churlish cat, like her father. In a way that can't be denied.

"Of course I missed you," he says, almost hoarsely.

"That's good. I thought you'd forgotten about me."

He laughs coolly. "Never gonna happen, sweetheart."

And it makes her want to cross her legs, never, sweetheart. But she doesn't want to spoil the moment.

"Why didn't you come to my birthday?"

His profile looks as handsome as she remembered. It's inconsolable, how she keeps growing older but he remains the same.

"I'm here now. I want to take you out for something sweet, if that's okay with you."

Hope tries to keep her voice steady, but her nerves betray her. "Why?"

"Hmm?" he asks, still watching the road.

"Why now?"

"Because I couldn't do it before. I was busy with a mission in the Ozarks, I had to talk down a coven –"

"Oh, God. At least don't bullshit me."

Marcel clamps his mouth shut. He probably doesn't like her swearing, but she finds it invigorating.

"Just admit that you couldn't stand the sight of me," she snarls, letting her temper run its course.

He exhales slowly, turning the wheel.

"Hope."

Hope. This godawful name. It's a verb and a noun and a kind of practical joke. Who do you expect to meet when you hear the name Hope? Some wide-eyed girl who is too naïve for her own good? Some country bumpkin who laughs too much and has a gap between her teeth?

She clears her throat. "I'm old enough now."

"Hope."

It's a warning, low and dangerous. He's still not looking at her, but there's a click in his jaw, like an insect trying to crawl out.

"Just take me to your place. I wanna sit on the terrace. The hyacinths are in bloom."

"That's not a good idea," he says, finally looking at her.

And in his brown eyes she receives confirmation.

At eight, he lifts her up, legs on his shoulders, as she watches the Mardi Gras parade go by. She holds onto his face, whispering in his ear from time to time about her favorite float, the alligator one, with the mouth open, the teeth filled with feathers.

At eighteen and a half she sits on his lap and he has his eyes closed, as if he can run away from this.

She kisses her fingers. And even though he can't see her, he brings his fingers to his lips.

Their fingers touch.

And their mouths follow.

The first kiss is an exchange of air, and he whispers against her lips, "you don't want this" and she sinks her nails into his cheek with a Mikaelsonian rage and pulls him forward.

Don't tell me what I want.

His mouth crests her Cupid's bow and she loves the feral warmth, the sharp taste of hunger.

She snakes her hands around his neck and his body becomes alive. His arms squeeze her waist, fingers hitching up her blouse to dwell on the bare small of her back, which means love, as her friends used to say.

The hyacinths smell like early blood.

She's nineteen and as he's finger-fucking her in a bohemian loft that her father is paying for. He said she had to do New York right. So of course she's got bottle-caps and Pollock look-alikes on the wall. She's even wearing her hair in several plaits and one of them is blue. She's got black nail polish on her nails. It's funny.

Marcel grunts when she rolls her head back, exposing her throat.

"Please do it, please, please, Marcel, pleeease…"

He still sometimes keeps his eyes closed because she's too material and resplendent and he must somehow deny that he gets to catch her clit between his lips and suck on it until she turns into a quivering mess. He must forget that he dines on her blood and that it keeps him alive.

"Marcel, please…"

She doesn't have to mewl much longer. Her throat is a landscape he cannot map. The ghosts of his punctures are there, under the surface, but they're so feeble, he always gets the urge to mark her again and again and again.

All those times he said he wouldn't, all those times he said he couldn't, but he ended up getting drunk on her.

He lunges forward, crushing her against the bed as he sinks his fangs in the softest, cruelest conglomeration of flesh, the place where the blood vessels steam and pop. She grips him like a Medusa, her arms and legs become snakes. And she screams.

Her magic is old and it never fails. It wraps him up in ecstasy and it carries them both over the edge.

At nine, she writes her family bubble, because the teacher asked her to.

She draws this big cloud and everyone's inside it, even Uncle Finn who's dead but not forgotten, and she allows for her grandmother Esther to have a really tiny corner, because she heard she was a meanie and tried to harm her. But she and Dad and Mum are in the center, and to her left she writes Marcel and a question mark, because she's not exactly sure, but she wants him there.

She's twenty and Klaus is turning his face into pulp, beating him with the blind rage and hurt of a lover. Marcel lets himself be carried by fists, almost embracing his maker.

Hope howls in her mother's arms.

Marcel looks up and smiles a bloody-red smile. He spits a broken tooth.

("She was supposed to be your sister!" Klaus roars in his ears.)

At nineteen and a half she kisses the hairs on his stomach and her tongue tastes the hollow where his pelvis meets his hips. Marcel shudders into her mouth, whispering a sinful "that's it, baby girl" that sends them both reeling.

She's twenty-three and he's still exiled from New Orleans. But they meet when the hyacinths are in bloom at his small house in Sacramento and she tells him she's going to transfer to a college there, to be closer to him, but he kisses her nose affectionately and tells her it's good for her to be away from him sometime.

"For your dad's sake."

Because they both love him, don't they?

Klaus can't quite stop his adult daughter from cavorting with whoever she likes (his words). But they can't hurt him that much. They have to be discreet. They have to practice restraint. They're his children, aren't they?

(He still makes her scream with his teeth, with his lips, with his tongue. When he slams his hips against her and she catches him and holds him to her breast, the blood they share is true.

And he wouldn't, couldn't go back on that.)

At sixteen, embracing him with the heavy pearls between them (the pearls which click and clack like hungry teeth), she sees her amber future, a fossil trapped in sticky sap, and she wants to ask him to pull her out. To sink his fingers there and catch her by the legs and slowly, ever so slowly tear her wings apart.

"Thank you, Marcel! This is the best gift!"

She'd let him do anything to her.

At twenty-six, she's standing before him wearing only her long string pearls that reach like rosaries to her knees. He bends down and kisses every single one.