Disclaimer: Not mine. Except for the fic.

AN: Merry Femslash February and a Happy Valentine's Day 3

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*Do Us Both a Favor*
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It was an unacknowledged, unspoken thing. When Lizzie was hanging out with MG, Hope found herself a different spot to spend time in. Usually, she made a polite excuse and just went outdoors, or to her room. But today her room felt too quiet and it was raining outside so strongly it's as if the gods they'd defeated months ago were punishing them from whatever afterlife they went to.

So instead, Hope had put on her earphones, turned on some music, and picked a seat in the common room that was furthest from Lizzie and her boyfriend.

"You're pathetic," her own voice suddenly told her, filled with scorn.

Hope felt herself freeze and looked to her right to see the cold, cruel face of her shadow-self. Her jaw clenched in irritation, and with hackles rising, Hope snapped back. "I'm sorry, I'm pathetic?"

She hadn't exactly yelled but there were a few sudden glances thrown her way anyway and Hope turned her head at once, letting hair fall over her face to cover up the incantation of a quick silencing spell. All she needed was for everyone in the school to go back to walking around her on eggshells because she was talking with herself again - it had taken too much work to earn back the trust she'd lost after she'd flipped the switch and went on her bloody bender, she wasn't risking it all because her humanity-less half was paying a new visit.

That done she looked over, glaring at the hallucination of the part of herself that had done her very best to ruin Hope's life. "I'm not the one who keeps showing up like a freaking gnat that can't take a hint about overstaying a welcome. Also, didn't I already get rid of you, do you want me to banish you again?" Intrusively, like clockwork any time a thought even vaguely connected to Lizzie appeared, her brain pushed to the front of her mind a memory of Lizzie, this time of her short, amused laugh from when Hope made the golden spell-butterfly burn into dust.

'Just in case.'

Apparently, that hadn't been enough though, her evil twin was back anyway.

"Please," the Hope with the terminal lack of humanity rolled her eyes, "like that's gonna scare me."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Annoyance was rearing its ugly head again. Talking with the bloodthirsty vampire half of herself was very nearly as infuriating from this side of who was in control as it had been from the other one.

"I don't know, I'm not the one who broke us in half, remember? That was you," the other Hope quipped back "and then you went on to whine about how you didn't like me in charge. At least I didn't reach this particular low."

She gestured over Hope, her jaw raised in an arrogant show of superiority.

"What are you even talking about?"

The other Hope didn't answer immediately, at least not with words. Instead, she looked past Hope toward the side of the room which Hope was avoiding.

"Lizzie looks... cozy," her evil double added saccharine-sweetly but with a sharp note in the tone that Hope did her best not to think about. Without meaning to, Hope's eyes followed the implied nudge. Something hissed inside her chest as if a red-hot poker had been directly pressed against exposed flesh when her eyes landed on Lizzie, who was curled up on the couch with a chemistry book in her lap and MG's arm around her shoulders.

"How is that- what are you-" she growled under her breath, frustrated "we're not talking about Lizzie."

"When I had Lizzie-" Hope's shadow-self started out, obviously set on ignoring her.

"You didn't have Lizzie, she was sired to you-"

"Yes, she was. And we both know what that means. She's ours Hope, so how about you do us both a favor, stop moping like a pathetic little fledge, march across this room, and break that thieving little arm in half." She finished the whole thing by miming the 'walking' with her fingers and then clenching those same fingers into a tight fist.

Hope let out a deep breath, trying to remind herself that her other self wasn't tangible enough to be strangled.

"MG's my friend, I'm not going to break his arm." If Hope was honest with herself, it was occasionally hard to remember that lately. Especially during those times when he showed up unexpectedly and kissed Lizzie in greeting - on her cheek, Lizzie always turned her cheek for him, at least when Hope was around. She tried not to let herself read too much into that.

"Don't be a baby, it's not like he won't heal, might learn not to touch other people's things though." The sharp, possessive tone that entered her other half's voice hit home, most of all because it found its like in Hope herself.

Still, the words themselves rubbed her wrong. "Lizzie isn't a thing."

The other Hope shrugged, unbothered. Then she smiled.

"Don't pretend you haven't spent the last three months a hair's trigger away from pushing Lizzie against the nearest wall and claiming her in front of half the school, it's not like she wouldn't enjoy it. I don't know how much you remember, but my memory distinctly recalls a certain number of times she admitted to loving-"

Okay, no.

"What I remember is snapping her neck. I remember killing her. I remember treating her the way mom told me to never treat the hybrids I might sire. I remember her breaking the sire bond and running away from you."

The other Hope's cool facade cracked in half for a fraction of a second and there was a moment where she felt the void between them echo back and forth with the sharp agony of the memories from that night, the way Hope had felt nothing - or wasn't supposed to be able to feel anything and yet it hurt. Being abandoned by Lizzie had broken something, had shaken her so deeply she'd nearly turned on her humanity herself. She'd been so very close.

She clenched her own fists, letting her nails bite into the skin of her palms painfully.

"Why do you even care? I thought you said you didn't want to feel things?"

"Yes, well unfortunately my weak-willed half is behind the wheel at the moment, which means I'm forced to deal with all those disgusting pointless emotions too."

"What's your point?"

"My point is that I don't care about this self-sabotaging guilt trip you're on, we're in love with Lizzie and if you don't start doing something about it soon I'm going to have to start fighting you for control of that wheel again."

She felt her throat dry with a pulse of panic.

"Do we understand each other?" the other side of herself asked her sweetly, eyes dancing maliciously. Hope opened her mouth but no sound materialized. It didn't seem to phase her shadow-self. "Great, glad we had this talk."

The Hope she'd once been when her humanity had been turned off grabbed her hand. She felt her finger twitch, - deliberately but not by her own will - and a searing spark of power left the finger with a flick that flashed across the room to hit MG.

The arm of his hoodie caught fire.

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AN2: Aaaaand here you have the rarely-seen Matchmaking Alter Ego in its natural habitat.

Please let me know what you thought.