On the road with Lizzie, maybe Hope picked up a few habits.
For one thing, as fun as it was to throw the sire bond back in Lizzie's face, it was just—easier—to go along with her insistence that they snatch, eat, erase instead of drinking people dry. It's not like Hope compromises for anybody, but she got to telling herself that Lizzie had a point—at least, that Hope would more easily remain undetectable if she didn't draw attention to herself with a string of murders. What Lizzie wanted just happened to coincide with what was practical: it had nothing to do with the look on Lizzie's face every time Hope reminded her that Hope was a monster.
Then there was the fact that Hope kept Lizzie around in the first place—that she got used to bouncing her ideas off of a companion. She was fine on her own, thank you very much, but it had been getting boring hopping from place to place without anybody to lord over. If left unchecked, boredom leads to depression, and depression leads to desperation, and desperation leads to humanity—and Hope couldn't have that, now, could she? Better to tolerate Lizzie's whining and judging and the irritating tenor of her voice so that at least things could stay interesting, if still predictable.
The most interesting part of all, of course, was the sire bond, because they didn't really understand where exactly it came from. Sure, it was Hope's blood that turned Lizzie, but plenty of vampires turn other vampires without them suddenly feeling the need to do everything their sires say, even when they don't want to. The obvious explanation was that it was just another weird-ass consequence of Hope being a tribrid—that anyone she turned would find themselves sired to her, just like what happened to the hybrids that her father created in his day. But that had had to do with the hybrids having gratitude for having been saved from their monthly transformations, and Lizzie certainly was never a werewolf to begin with. Besides, it was only werewolves who found themselves sired to him, not anybody Klaus tried to turn.
They didn't talk about it, Hope and Lizzie, not the entire time they were together. And she'll kill you before she admits it out loud, but maybe she was sort of hoping (ha) that the real reason Lizzie found herself sired to Hope was…
The biggest, worst, ugliest habit of all that Hope picked up on the road was codependency. Lizzie was cursed with it, and within days, Hope found herself cursed with it, too—with this feeling like nothing she did or thought was valid until she did it or said it to Lizzie. She'll deny it all the way to her grave, but when Lizzie told her not to take the sire bond away, that she wasn't ready to be alone, maybe Hope wasn't ready to be alone, either. Maybe hearing Lizzie say she needed Hope gave Hope a glimmer of a feeling that she hadn't experienced since Landon, and—
It wasn't like she loved Lizzie or anything. Please. She flipped her switch, remember? It's just—some nights, when Hope lay awake in hotel rooms they compelled themselves for free, she'd watch Lizzie's shoulders rising and falling and wonder if Lizzie was wondering the same thing Hope was. Hope may not have loved Lizzie, but Hope couldn't shake the notion that Lizzie might have loved her, and if she did—well—she didn't altogether hate the idea.
She told herself it was because love could be useful. If Lizzie had feelings for her, then Hope could more easily prey on her. Again, it had everything to do with practicality and nothing to do with the way Hope kept replaying in her mind the way Lizzie's voice sounded when she'd said what she'd said—that Lizzie didn't want Hope to leave her alone, not yet.
It's just—it was one thing when all her ex-friends at the Salvatore School went out of their way to stick their noses where they didn't belong, trying to convince Hope that her humanity was still somewhere in her, but it wasn't until Lizzie and the sire bond that Hope had a reason to want to stay connected to someone from her past. It wasn't until Lizzie that Hope felt like, well—she couldn't have what she wanted, but maybe she could have something. If the sire bond stemmed from feelings Lizzie had for her—if she could just figure out how to keep Lizzie around long enough to get something out of this—
The thing about turning off your humanity is that you can't feel the good stuff, either, not love or hope or joy. Believing that Lizzie felt something for her gave Hope an inkling of what it might feel like to get one of those back, and as much as that's not what she wanted, she sort of… wanted it.
Past tense, anyway. It's all gone to hell now that Lizzie's broken the bond and proven without a doubt that she doesn't want or need Hope like they both thought she did.
That betrayal she told the man who's become tonight's dinner that she's been feeling? Yeah, it wasn't just about Lizzie bailing on Hope's plan or even about her bailing on the sire bond—it was about her making Hope feel things, at the risk of letting back in the nightmarish pain she knows is going to come if she ever feels anything for Landon again, and then sticking Hope with the burden of it all on her own. It was about Lizzie actually convincing Hope that somebody in this world had love for her and then just—throwing it back in Hope's face as soon as she started to believe that that love was unconditional, that it would stick around long enough for Hope to figure out what to do with it.
Well, the joke's on Lizzie, because Hope knows exactly what she's going to do with whatever's been happening inside her head. She's going to take it, and she's going to bury it, and she's going to prove that everyone is wrong about her—that the old Hope is gone.
The man's blood tastes like metal on her tongue, and she wonders how many more irreversible lines she can find to cross tonight.