Josie always forgets how much she hates this stupid building until she walks in through the ground floor and is immediately met with a sign plastered over the elevator doors that read Out of Service, in sharpie.
It's the third time in two months, and though the cardio she gets from walking up eight flights of stairs is probably necessary, her muscles still protest all the same as she all but drags herself up the last few steps, pulling her tote bag back up onto her shoulder that had slid down.
It's almost embarrassing how winded Josie is when she reaches her door, her breaths shallow as they enter and exit through her parted lips.
She had stayed late at the hospital again, later than she intended at least. The sun was already beginning to set and her stomach was screeching at her for food. Her only goal right now was to heat up some of her leftover Chinese takeout and enjoy another episode of Love Island (or two).
Josie rifles through her bag and fishes out her key and slides it into the lock, listening to the definite clicks of the notches. She's about to turn it, her hand twitching with the anticipated movement, but quickly stops.
She waits for the sound of Iggy's barking, a noise that usually erupts the second the key gets even near to the door, but Josie is instead hit with a staggering silence as the hairs on the back of her arms begin to prickle with the skin.
She carefully rests her ear against the wood to try and get even a whisper of a sound, but nothing.
Josie slowly reaches her left hand up to the talisman dutifully hanging around her neck and siphons.
Lizzie had bound her magic to the charm a while ago so that it wasn't finite. She had argued that Josie would need it since she still had to rely on external sources.
The witch takes a steadying breath, hoping that she's just overreacting and that Iggy has finally put all of her very expensive training lessons to use.
But just as Josie is about to fully turn the key, a large thud sounds from behind her, making her jolt as she sucks in a sharp inhale. She quickly drops her hand from her chest and turns around, plastering a smile that she hopes doesn't come off as a grimace.
"Theo!" She quickly exclaims before clearing her throat, not realizing how scratchy it was. "Hey!"
Theo was her neighbor across the hall, moving in soon after her about a year ago.
He was sweet, and admittedly handsome, and though he had kindly asked her out more than a few times, she just couldn't bring herself to say yes.
Everything that made him so nice is also what made him so human, and though Josie had distanced herself from the supernatural world a while ago, she still knew that she couldn't get swept up in the normalcy of humanity again.
"Hey, Jo!" He smiles brightly at her, and even with a trash bag in his hand, Josie still thinks he looks rather charming. "Late night again?"
She swallows thickly, still acutely aware, or rather unaware of what lies beyond her door. "Yeah, the office got busy." No one had ever mentioned how much paperwork doctors have to do, even in her residency.
Lizzie had said it was a little on the nose, becoming a doctor like their bio-mom, but Josie liked to think she was paying homage to her.
She briefly reminisces on the night they had met, though in the midst of crisis, Jo's eyes had been sweet, pure. Maybe this was her road to redemption, saving lives to make up for the ones she had scarred.
His boyish grin never falters and Josie hates that not even it can bring her comfort right now.
He rubs the back of his neck. "I'd invite you in for a glass of wind-down-wine but I guess it's rude to keep a guest waiting."
Josie furrows her eyebrows in confusion. "Guest?"
"Yeah, you have someone staying over, right?"
Josie can feel her stomach twist and she doesn't think it's from hunger anymore. She can feel her heart begin to beat sporadically in her chest and she wills it to slow down just in case Theo can see it thumping violently against her rib cage.
"Y-yeah," She does her best to flatten her tone, but even to her own ears she knows she sounds mildly shaken at best, "how'd you know?"
Josie knew something was off. Not that there was inherently anything wrong, just that something wasn't right.
She knew telling Theo that she wasn't expecting someone would escalate things to a place that she couldn't control. If worst came to worst she didn't need Theo's life on her hands.
Theo picks up on the quivering of Josie's voice too, and his confusion soon mirrors hers. "I ran into her on my way up from getting groceries. She was letting Iggy out to pee. Thought she might've been dog-napping or something so I talked to her."
Josie nods, maybe too frantically. "She's just an old friend."
He nods back. "Yeah, sounded like it. She seemed..." He pauses looking for the right word, "fond of you."
Josie feels her mind racing at the speed of Nascar drivers, sifting through all of the possible people it could be.
She could text Lizzie and ask if it's her, but she thinks that asking and possibly sending her into a full crisis mode, which is then followed by her booking an immediate flight, was unnecessary. If it was Lizzie, then they could reunite inside the apartment and all would be fine and dandy.
If it isn't Lizzie... well if it isn't Lizzie, Josie may be royally fucked.
"Well, I better not keep her waiting then." Another breathy chuckle escapes her lips as she points behind her towards the door, and he quickly gets the hint to excuse himself, walking down the long corridor and down the stairs to throw out his trash.
Josie prays that if this is the last time she sees him that he discovers her body in a timely manner so that her corpse doesn't stink up her apartment and seep into her clothes. She knows that there are a few blouses that Lizzie will be ready to claim once she dies, after a respectable mourning period of course.
She braces herself a second time and finally opens the door, slowly pushing it wide as the hinges let out a whiny creak.
She steps into the long entryway, cursing it for obstructing her view from the rest of the apartment.
Hand raised and offensive spell already on her tongue, Josie grants herself the small mercy of releasing the breath she was holding once she hears Iggy's panting from within the apartment, her tail thudding against the hardwood as it wags.
"Iggy!" She calls out carefully. "I'm home!"
But Iggy doesn't run to greet her at the door like she usually does, and it makes her suck in another breath to hold.
If they were supernatural, Josie could siphon them, granted that she's able to get close enough. But if they were human, her chances were a lot better, unless they had a gun of course.
Fuck, what if they have a gun?!
Okay, it's fine, it's fine. She'd invisque herself, assess the situation, and get it sorted. Yeah, that sounded like seventy-five percent foolproof, which, if her med school courses taught her anything, is a passing grade.
So Josie gets ready to charge into battle, preparing herself to be met with the face of evil for the nth time as she quietly pads into her living room, trying to make as little noise as possible.
As she rounds the corner at the end of the entryway, she carefully peers around the wall and sees the back of a woman's head, casually sitting on the sofa as Iggy paws at her knees, almost absentmindedly running her hands through Iggy's coat.
Josie determines that there's no gun in sight (it's the little victories) and readies herself to spring out from behind the wall, backed against it like a spy as she prepares to attack, until the woman speaks that is.
"I can hear you, you know."
And all of the nervous energy, the adrenaline, the hot anxiety that had burned under her skin since she put her key in the lock turns immeasurably cold, and despite her efforts to be quiet, she can't help the piercing gasp that escapes from her treacherous lips.
"Heard you since you entered the building." This is mumbled much quieter, but Josie can hear it all the same throughout the uneasily silent room. Even if her heart thunders loudly in her ears, she thinks that she'll always be trained to hone in on that voice.
And Josie immediately knows who it is, god, how could she not, despite it being unheard for years, how could she ever forget that voice.
There's a moment where it feels like everything is just frozen. Josie isn't moving, not voluntarily at least 'cause it feels like her entire body is trembling if she's being honest. She isn't quite sure if she's still casting her spell, if she's even breathing at this point.
She thinks that maybe the world has stopped spinning, just momentarily, and in that second, she wishes that it would start spinning backwards, so that she could go back to before she opened the door to her shitty, tiny apartment, in this shitty, wretched building.
If that were the case, Josie could warn herself to turn around, to save herself the anguish, and she suddenly feels seventeen again, running to Belgium in the hopes to forget the face sitting on her couch, to just forget...
Everything.
"I'm-" She's talking again, but abruptly cuts herself off. The speech she'd prepared on the way here suddenly vanishing into dust. "I'm not-" She stops again.
"My h-" And again, before she finally just gives up, letting out a frustrated sigh. "Can you just stop hiding? I feel like I'm confessing to your dog."
Maybe Josie can still make a run for it, sprint out the door, and maybe get to the street in time. She can't do any harm in public, right?
She's close to bolting until she hears a soft, "Josie," Stern, but so unbelievably delicate, like the utterance of her name may break both of them if spoken too loud or with the wrong intention.
And then all of a sudden, tears that Josie didn't even know were brimming at the surface begin to fall heavily onto her floors, and before she knows it, soft sobs begin to dig their feet into her chest as her shoulders hunch over with the weight of eleven years of silence.
Her hands shoot up to cover her mouth in a feeble attempt to quiet them, but it's no use. Her sniffling may as well sound like air horns in the quiet room.
"This was a bad idea. Maybe I should go-"
But before Josie can stop herself, she's hurtling herself out from behind the corner, facing Hope.
She's standing in front of the couch like she's preparing her exit, as she twists a ring on her middle finger.
Hope looks at her, or more accurately looks through her. "You're um, you're still invisible."
Josie lifts the spell, and as they lock eyes, she feels fifteen years younger, like she's at the Salvatore School, filled with that jittery excitement that always washed over her when she made eye contact with Hope, only this time, there's a trepidation that follows too.
Hope's eyes are clear, like crystal. There's no malice in them that Josie can detect, and she's not wearing that cunning smirk, so Josie takes that as a good sign as well.
Josie swallows a big lump in her through, actively trying to stop crying but it's like her eyes are a leaky faucet. She pays them no mind, however, trying to keep her voice steady while she asks, "I'm going to make a cup of tea, would you like one?"
She's had dreams like this before, ones where Hope is thrown back into her life. They'd hug and they'd cry, and then hug some more, catching up on the years they were apart and then promising to never spend any following years like that again.
But Josie doubts this is going to be remotely close to any of the meetings she had been fantasizing. They were already off script. Usually she would imagine them stumbling upon each other in a coffee shop or on the subway, but, no, Hope had broken into her house and taken her dog for a piss apparently.
Hope opens her mouth to answer. Once, then twice, before she simply nods. "That would be nice."
Josie abruptly turns around and attempts to discreetly wipe her tears with the back of her sleeve, forgetting about her bag that had slid off somewhere in the entryway, and gets to boiling a kettle of water in the adjacent kitchen.
It's a small apartment. The kitchen and living room are practically one space with the only indication that they're two different areas being the tile that lines the kitchen instead of the hardwood in the rest of the rooms.
So small in fact that Josie can hear the thrumming of Hope's fingers on a couch cushion, rhythmic and anxious.
By the time the kettle blares, Josie's tears have ceased a considerable amount with a stubborn one escaping now and then, but her fingers still shake as she pours the boiling water into two mugs that she's prepared.
To the backsplash, she says, "It's chamomile. I hope that's okay."
"That's perfect."
And Josie winces at the sound, almost like she wasn't expecting a reply.
Josie grabs the two mugs by the handle and turns around, frightening when she sees Hope directly in front of her.
The mugs shake in her hands, but Hope quickly grabs the bottoms of them, stabilizing the cups before the tea has a chance to splash onto Josie's hands.
"Jesus Christ, Hope!" And it comes out sharper than Josie intended, her breath coming out in short puffs. She doesn't know why she's so mad. She's typically not quick to anger but she can feel the furrow in her eyebrows, and as much as she wills them to smoothen, they just won't.
Hope slowly pulls her hands away and steps back. "Sorry," Is breathed out in a whisper, and Josie senses that she sounds more guilty than apologetic.
Josie opens her mouth to say it's fine, more out of instinct than anything, but she immediately snaps it shut and instead opts to walk past her and towards the sofa, setting the mugs down on the coffee table before sitting carefully on the far right of the couch.
Hope joins her, sitting on the far left, and Josie silently grabs her mug, handing it over.
Iggy takes it upon herself to settle on the couch between them, and Josie gives her the side eye for being such a lousy guard dog. Seriously, she let the world's most dangerous predator waltz right into their home.
They both sit completely forward, their knees not pointing away, and certainly not pointing inward.
She makes a conscious effort not to look at Hope, but she can't necessarily help it. Her eyes are like a moth drawn to a flame.
It almost startles Josie how unchanged Hope appears.
She had witnessed it throughout her childhood with Caroline, how through every visit, the blonde's face was almost cemented in its youth with not a fine line in sight.
Josie sees it now every time she visits Lizzie when her twin teasingly points out her deepening smile lines, or another wrinkle along the corner of her eyes.
It's supposed to be light poking, the kind that sisters are filled with, and it almost thrills Josie to know that vampirism has made Lizzie so content after twenty-nine years of a constant internal battle, but even then, it's a poignant reminder that they're not moving on the same timeline.
Lizzie has forever to look forward to, while Josie has a solid thirty years if she cuts her sugar intake.
It's not like Lizzie hasn't offered to turn her. There was even a period of time when she was practically insistent, but Josie had always declined.
She figured it was two sides of the same coin. If she wasn't the one dying, then it was the people around her that were, and she had accepted her mortality far too long ago to take the easy way out.
But looking at Hope, somehow it feels, looks different. Expectedly, she's a carbon copy of her appearance eleven years ago, despite the thin layer of makeup that gives the illusion of age, but there's something about her that almost glows, a distinction from Caroline and Lizzie.
Josie momentarily thinks that maybe it's her hair that's back to its original red hue, though slightly darker than when they were kids, but then decides it's not.
Maybe it's her skin. Josie thinks that Hope should take up modeling with skin that clear. It looks soft and bright, and Josie is briefly overcome with a desire to reach out and see for herself if it's as supple as it looks, to just rest her hand on Hope's cheek, but the want is squandered before it really even blooms, and Josie internally scolds herself for even allowing herself to have such a thought.
It could be her eyes? Still the same shiny blue, the kind Josie could get lost in without ever having a desire to be rescued, like a dingy stranded at sea, free from everything that kept it tethered to land.
They look darker, Josie notes. She wonders if they'd always been like this, or if the lighting was making it look that way. Or even worse, she wonders if she had begun to forget what shade of blue they were in the first place, and she immediately stops trying to point out everything that's different, and starts to focus on the things that are the same.
Hope is still a tiny, tiny thing, barely surpassing Josie's shoulder. She'd always found it ironic how the prophesied end of the world could hardly reach the top shelf on her own.
There's supposed to be a freckle sitting on her right cheek, and when Josie goes to check, she almost let out a sigh of relief to see that it's sitting dutifully right where it always was.
And when Hope holds her cup, carefully between her dainty hands, her right pinky still hovers just above the ceramic, and though it's much less obnoxious than the fully erect finger that she used to flaunt when they were younger, (because that's how her Uncle Elijah used to drink, just like a true Englishman) it's enough to comfort Josie, at least just a little.
"Why are you here, Hope?" Hope's more than halfway done with her cup by the time that Josie asks that question. Josie hasn't even touched hers.
She can practically hear the gears turning in Hope's mind, wracking for an appropriate answer. What Josie is met with instead is an airy chuckle, and she can't quite tell if that's better or worse than a definitive answer.
"I don't know how to phrase this without it sounding absolutely morbid."
And this time Josie doesn't stop herself from glancing at her, fully admiring the small smile that adorns Hope's full lips, genuine, but tired.
"We grew up around morbid, I'd be more surprised if you had a positive reason for coming to see me." She doesn't mean for it to come off bitter but it does anyways, and the smile that Josie had been so comforted to see quickly dissipates.
"Josie-" There's that soft tone again, the one Hope had used when she first entered the apartment. It never really gets old Josie supposes because she feels herself melt into a puddle of mush all the same.
"No, no," Josie cuts her off, scared that if they start that conversation it'll never quite ever end. "I shouldn't have, I just meant..." She trails off, finally picking up her lukewarm mug off the table.
"I just meant that a lot of stuff happened when we were younger," Josie says softly, like if she speaks too loudly a God might hear and come down to remind her just what they went through. "I guess I just expect it to keep following us around."
Hope doesn't say anything for a moment, letting the words weigh heavily in between them. "We should still talk about it though." She shifts a little in her seat before adding quietly, "About us."
Josie has to bite back a scoff. She had lost any semblance of us a while ago. It was just something that faded quietly, worn down with the test of time. She wasn't bitter about it necessarily, she had just accepted it. Accepted that maybe she and Hope just weren't meant to cross paths again, and she had to be okay with that.
Obviously, she was wrong, but still.
Josie shakes her head. "I want to hear your reasoning first, then we can talk about," She hesitates, "us, later." She ignores how foreign the word feels on her tongue and urges Hope on with a nod.
Hope takes another swig of her tea before pursing her lips together, her entire body tensing like she was steeling herself.
And then Hope does something unexpected. She turns her entire body towards Josie, crossing one leg atop the cushion while the other hangs off the sofa. She rests her closest arm atop the back of the couch and uses her other hand to rest her mug in her lap.
Her posture is open, inviting almost, and Josie is tempted to mirror her but instead opts to her turn her knees and body inwards to signify that Hope had her attention.
For a second it feels exactly like what it is, but simultaneously not at all. It feels like two old friends reunited after years apart, to discuss their careers and lives instead of possibly the end of the world.
"I died," Hope says simply, and the statement is both striking and uneasily familiar.
Upon seeing Josie's confused expression, she quickly tacks on, "Again. I died again, about a year ago."
Josie doesn't ask anything, just waits for Hope to continue.
"I ran into this group of vampires who said they knew my dad. Always surprises me how many people he's pissed off, they're never really in short supply." She lets out a small laugh, though there's no humor behind it.
"They ambushed me. It was quick. They knew they wouldn't be able to take me hostage so they just staked me. Easy as that." Her eyes begin to take this glossy sheen, looking far away.
"While I was out they took me to some shack, had someone stand over me twenty-four seven, and the second I'd come back, they'd kill me again, and again, and again."
Hope begins to fidget with her rings again and Josie has an urge to just reach out and settle them, but decides against it. At least for now.
"I was only there for a day or two. It was bearable. I'd been through worse." Josie instantly hates how she's talking about it so casually, how she's belittling her experiences. "But it was the first time I had died since transitioning, and I-"
Hope swallows thickly, her eyes darting away from the spot that she'd been staring at for the past ten minutes.
"It was just cold, and dark. There was no purgatory, no bright light, I thought-" It's the most visceral emotion Josie has seen since Hope got here, and it's as startling as it is gut-wrenching. "It was like I was in Malivore again." She whispers.
Hope pauses to exhale a shuddery breath, recollecting herself before continuing. "When I was fifteen I died too y'know. The Hollow and that entire mess."
That glassiness that had overcome Hope's iris' quickly looks wet as fresh tears break the surface. "I saw my mom, and I don't know, it's dumb, but I thought I'd see her again if I died as a vampire, but I guess that's not really how it works." Hope hides a sob behind a wet chuckle, and this time, Josie doesn't resist carefully taking Hope's hand in hers, letting them rest intertwined on the back of the couch.
Hope gives her hand a squeeze of acknowledgement before she slowly pulls back, using that hand to pet Iggy, still dutifully sat in between them.
"I might never see her or my dad again, I think I've made my peace with that, but there's one thing on this Earth that might allow me to."
"Hope-" Josie quickly begins to interfere. This was sounding like it was beginning to slide down a very slippery slope.
"I'm not asking you to kill me." Hope immediately cuts her off. "I'm just asking if you'd be able to." She shrugs. "Hypothetically, of course."
Josie sighs, almost exasperated. "There's a high likelihood that you'll be alive far after I'm gone, Hope. What makes you think that I'll even get an opportunity to kill you." She quickly checks herself. "Hypothetically, of course."
Hope bites her lip and casts her gaze downwards. Josie doesn't like that look.
"The only reason I was able to escape was because-" Hope's eyes flicker to hers, and for a moment it seems like she might be contemplating if she should even say what she's about to say. Her jaw clenches, once, then twice before she says, "It turned off."
Josie doesn't need any further clarification, her eyes shutting at the statement as her memories are flooded with Hope eleven years ago, her eyes vacant and void, leaving a trail of blood in her wake.
"I-I blacked out, I don't know for how long, but when I came back to, I was me again and their bodies were..." Josie doesn't need clarification on that either.
"I can still hear her, Jo." Her voice comes out unstable, quivering at the edges of her words. "Ever since then, she's just, there sometimes."
Josie frowns. "Hope, you've already overcome it once. You're the strongest person I know. You have to fight it."
Hope smiles, melancholy and bittersweet. "And if I don't, hypothetically speaking, you'll kill me?"
Josie shuts her eyes, rubbing a hand up and down her face. "Fuck, Hope." Maybe Lizzie was right. She was getting old.
Josie never even got a chance to say goodbye.
She worked tirelessly from afar, researching and planning with hopes to turn Hope's humanity back on and all she got was a single letter back and a fucking stick.
Okay so maybe, yeah, she is a little fucking bitter, because she has spent more than half of her life helplessly bending to Hope's will and she wasn't even granted the courtesy of a proper goodbye.
She abruptly stands, startling Iggy off the couch and off to her dog bed where she can lay in peace.
Josie takes a few short strides to her kitchen and begins rummaging through her cabinets.
"More tea?"
"No," Josie answers decisively, "God, fuck no, alcohol. I need so much alcohol."
She finds a bottle of lychee soju, unopened, and doesn't even bother to put it in a chilled glass, shit, even a glass with ice, before she's twisting off the lid and drinking straight from the neck.
Hope is looking at her through wide eyes. "Josie maybe you should slow down-"
Josie silences her by raising a single finger, prompting her to wait. After a moment, she finally lowers the bottle and sets it on the countertop with a loud clink, before unattractively wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
"I haven't seen you in eleven years, Hope. Eleven years!"
Oh, maybe that wasn't such a good idea, she thinks as the liquid immediately rushes to her head, making her feel unsteady, but it does nothing to deter her from her speech.
"No letter, no phone call, and then you break into my house asking if I have what it takes to murder you?!"
"Josie, seriously-"
"No," Josie almost stamps her foot down like a child. "You don't get to pretend like I don't exist for years and then just show up like this! I've sent text messages, Christmas cards, birthday cards, fuck, I even sent a Thanksgiving card and that's not even a real thing!"
Her chest is heaving, but she can't quite will herself to stop. "You can't treat me like nothing and then ask me to do something that means everything, Hope!"
Josie buries her face in her hands, tiredly rubbing at her eyes, trying to calm down. "I just-" She sighs, "I can't do that again."
And neither needs more context to remember the attempt to bring Landon back, the black magic that unrightfully coursed through Josie's veins, and the chaos that broke loose afterwards.
A sharp knock suddenly cuts through the tense atmosphere, and Josie debates just ignoring it before begrudgingly going to answer it.
She's met with a concerned Theo as she swings the door open.
"Josie, hey, I heard a lot of yelling is everything alright?"
She leans into the wall beside her, letting it support her weight. "Yeah, everything's fine, sorry. I guess I just got a little too... enthusiastic."
Unconvinced, he lowers his voice to a whisper. "I can call the police." He offers, "Or I got a mean right hook, whichever you prefer." He throws in a joke to lighten the mood, which admittedly works as she lets out a small laugh, but only because Josie knows that Hope could easily beat him with both her arms tied behind her back, her legs tied together, and blindfolded.
"No, Theo. We're fine, I promise." She hopes that her smile puts him at ease, which seems to be the case as he agreeingly nods, though still wary.
"You know where I am." Josie gives him another small smile before closing the door, letting a quiet groan escape her lips as she rests her forehead against the plank of wood.
She really doesn't want to go back, but she does anyways. Character development, or whatever.
Josie takes her place behind the countertop, as far away from Hope as she can get without hiding in the bathroom.
"Upstanding guy, huh?"
"Oh, fuck off, Hope."
Hope lets out a sharp exhale through her nose before raising her voice, or rather, sharpening the edge of it. "Do you wanna know why I gave you that ugly fucking stick?!" She doesn't wait for Josie's answer before continuing. "Because you are literally the only person I can trust it with."
"You trusted me to keep it safe! This was not in the job description!"
"I trusted you to do the right thing with it!"
"Do you want it back, or something!? What, so you can impale yourself with it!? Fuck that, Hope! I can send it to your family for safekeeping, hell, I can even send it to the school if that's what you want, but you can't just ask me to kill you!"
Hope quickly gets up as well, entering the kitchen just to immediately rummage through the drawers, finally stopping when she comes upon the knives.
She pulls two out, grabbing Josie's hand to forcibly place one of the handles in her palm, before holding the other one up to Josie's throat, the tip placed right below her chin.
"Hope, what the fuck!"
"Kill me." Hope immediately says.
"Are you fucking insane?!"
Hope maneuvers them so that Josie is pinned to the edge of the counter, sandwiched between the marble and the blade.
"Kill," Hope punctuates the words, "Me." She repeats.
The knife shakes in Josie's trembling hand, and for the briefest of moments she considers it. No harm, no foul, technically speaking. The worst that would happen is Hope's blood staining the grout and then she's resurrected within the hour.
She peers down into Hope's eyes, a little red around the rims, and sees that the sea she had grown so fond of had suddenly turned turbulent, thrashing the dingy around with it.
"You know your threat holds a lot less merit when I know that you won't do it." Josie grits out, voice strained as her eyes glance down to the hilt of the kitchen knife.
It's one Caroline had gifted her last Christmas, spurred on by another occasion when the blonde visited and declared that all of her knives were too dull when preparing dinner.
Hope's eyes thin into small slits, the blue barely peeking out from underneath. "Who says I won't?"
"You didn't kill me when your humanity was off, you wouldn't do it now."
"I'm not the same person I was eleven years ago, despite the mirror telling me otherwise."
"Could've fooled me. You're just as stubborn."
Josie drops the knife, the metal clattering loudly atop the tile.
Hope breathes out deeply through her nose and closes her eyes like she's disappointed before lowering the knife from Josie's neck.
"You'd think after all these years your martyrdom would get at least a bit more bearable."
Hope backs up to lean against the opposite counter, just slightly diagonal to Josie, setting the knife down behind her.
Josie silently hands her the bottle of soju and the tribrid chugs down the rest of the bottle, without a doubt feeling it much less than Josie.
And for a long moment, there's a palpable nostalgia that surrounds them as they unpack everything that's happened in the past two hours- in the past two decades.
Josie fears that she may never escape it, may never escape the lasso Hope has around her heart, whether romantically or platonically, she's terrified that nothing may ever surpass the feelings that she has for her, no matter how negative they are, no matter how blissful, how all-consuming.
She has spent more than a decade protecting the one thing that can kill her, and despite the years of no communication, sometimes Josie likes to think that this was Hope's way of staying attached to her too, that maybe the hold Hope has on her is not unreciprocated.
After a while of staring at her feet, Josie doesn't know quite how long, Hope utters something, quietly, like she isn't certain if she wants to be heard. "You're beautiful, y'know. All adulty and stuff."
And it's such a contrast to their earlier conversation, so completely random that it forces a short laugh out of Josie. Hope had a knife to her throat a few moments ago and now she's complimenting her, it was giving Josie whiplash.
"Is that your way of calling me old?" Josie asks, borderline teasing. Her eyes stray up from her feet to glance at Hope, only to find that the short girl was already staring at her, for how long, she doesn't know.
Hope lets out a laugh too. "No," She shakes her head fondly, "Don't forget, I'm technically older than you."
She shifts her weight from one foot to another before adding. "I don't know, when we found out about the merge I thought I wouldn't get a chance to see you like this."
Hope speaks for both of them when she says that. Josie thought there was a possibility too.
"It's just nice, I had to say it. You-" Hope pauses like she's making sure she really wants to say what she's about to. "You're beautiful. You always have been."
And there's too much history to unpack behind those words. Too many will they won't theys, but for now, Josie will just take the compliment, and unpack the overflowing adoration in Hope's eyes another day.
"Thank you, obviously the same goes for you."
"Obviously?" And there's that eyebrow quirk, the look Hope makes when she's being purposely obnoxious. Josie kind of hates how much she'd missed it.
"Shut up," Josie mumbles, but the corners of her lips quirk up all the same.
They bask in another charged, but comfortable silence before Josie asks something that's been sitting on her mind for a while. If they weren't going to unpack their feelings tonight, might as well unload some other stuff.
"Why me?" Josie whispers, searching Hope's face for some hidden answer, something to acquiesce the confusion that she's felt for so long.
Hope straightens up at the question, just barely, crossing her arms over her chest as she leans farther back.
"I said that you were the only one I could trust."
"I just don't think that's true, Hope."
Another silence.
"Then maybe I just wanted you to have it."
"But, why?"
Another silence, coupled with Hope's agitated sigh. She opens up her mouth to answer like she's revving up to say something snarky but quickly closes it. Her features soften as she relaxes again, letting her arms drop.
"'Cause I'm selfish."
Josie studies her face carefully and when she finds nothing but sincerity, it almost frustrates her. She had been trying to come up with some philosophical reasoning for years, all to find out that Hope was just selfish?
And she is irked for a second, really irked, but then she remembers that this may be one of the rare occasions that Hope has ever indulged in something she actually wanted, and not what everyone else was expecting. So instead of retorting, Josie just waits for her to continue.
"Do you remember the letter I sent with the spear?"
Josie nods to signify that she did. It's somewhere in her apartment right now actually. The edges were probably yellowed, maybe a small crease or two, but she had read it obsessively when she first received it, analyzing every phrase, every word. Josie had probably read it so often that even now, she might be able to recite it verbatim.
Gradually, her time reading it was less spent deciphering its contents and just tracing Hope's handwriting, trying to remember what her laugh sounded like and how her eyes shone when she laughed.
"I wrote it with the intention of never seeing you again."
There's the punchline, or rather just the punch. Josie feels like she's just been struck in the stomach.
"And this isn't me sacrificing our relationship because I think that your life would be easier without me in it." She clarifies, "At least not entirely."
Hope crosses her arms again, looking down. "I'm ecstatic that you get to live this full life, Jo. Where you're Doctor Saltzman and you volunteer at the animal shelter and walk through Central Park every weekend, but just because the merge is over does not mean you're here forever."
She takes a deep breath. "And I know it's awful and selfish, but I knew I wouldn't be able to stand losing you if we kept doing what we were doing."
And the confession makes Josie suck in a deep breath as well, her eyes fluttering shut because finally, finally, Hope had admitted it. Admitted that there was something. That if they had kept going down the path that they had been trailing on eleven years ago, then maybe they could've been in love, or at least close to it.
The good kind of love where you make coffee for each other every morning and read in bed together before going to sleep. The kind of love that Josie has been grasping for in all of her relationships, only to come up terribly short.
"But I gave you the staff because I couldn't let you go, not all of you."
Hope's voice lowers as she says. "I meant what I said, Josie. I trust you with my life, but I trust you with so much more than that too."
And Josie wonders what could be worth more than Hope's life. An immortal being that has the power to create and end worlds, start and finish wars. What could possibly be greater than the strongest-
"I trust you with my heart."
Their eyes meet and it almost feels like it's the first time, naive and vulnerable, baring their souls to each other in an attempt to just get the other to understand.
"Then why come see me after all this time? A phone call would've worked. Another letter?"
Hope smiles, small, but a bit self-loathing. "Some things never change, my selfish streak is still going strong. I guess I'll always be a little selfish when it comes to you."
Josie tries really hard to be mad at her, but it's practically impossible. She thinks that she'd do the same in Hope's shoes.
"You know she never really went away, right? The darkness."
Hope looks up at her intrigued.
"It's different, it's a part of me, like two sides of the same coin."
Hope looks like she wants to argue, but Josie interrupts her before she can.
"But you're not you without your humanity, Hope. It's like a piece of you is missing, the best of you."
Josie reaches out to hold her hand, and Hope lets her.
"I know you're scared, but you're acting as if you've already lost."
Josie tugs on her arms, pulling Hope off the counter.
"But you're right here. My Hope is right here and I don't see her going anywhere anytime soon."
Josie raises her other hand and rests it on Hope's cheek, relaxing as she feels the soft, burning skin under her careful touch.
"It doesn't always have to be you, versus everyone else, Hope."
And Josie doesn't think that she's aware, but tears begin to stream down Hope's cheeks and she catches each one with her thumb. "It can be us, okay? I've never given up on you, and I'm sure as hell not gonna let you give up on yourself."
Hope's eyes flutter shut under the caress, and her lips tremble as she lets out a shaky, "Okay."
Josie lets out an uneven breath of her own at the response, her body relaxing as she delicately wraps her arms around Hope's shoulders, pulling her in. She noses against the side of her head as Hope's arms snake around her waist like an anaconda, snug and all-consuming.
"And if you're still in a selfish mood, stay, with me, just for a little while."
She feels Hope's shallow breaths against her throat, warm and ticklish, but more importantly, she feels the small nod of Hope's head.
"Yeah," Hope whispers, "I'll stay."
Josie's hold around her tightens and they stay in each other's embrace for a long time, unwavering and content as they try to exemplify just how much the distance as affected them.
Hope doesn't think that her time with Josie could ever be quite long enough, but for now- for now this was perfect.