Sitting down at the bar, Hope’s eyes were a little wide as she thought about everything that had just happened. The person that was supposed to like a guardian while she was at school basically just had her torture her husband to try and get him to turn his humanity back on. It had to be some weird dream right?
She looked up when Liv walked up asking her what she wanted. “Bourbon.” She answered not even caring that she was 17. “It’s been one of those days,” she added narrowing her eyes. “Is everyone from Mystical Falls one point all about using people, screw the consequences to anyone else?” Hope didn’t know much about Liv other than she was Josie’s Aunt and a witch.
Liv grunted out a light laugh as soon as Hope Mikaelson sat down across the bar from where she was standing and asked for a bourbon right off the bat. She’d seen and spent a little time with her since she and Josie had gotten to Atlantis, but she wouldn’t say that she really knew the girl all that well other than as Josie’s friend from school. Liv had never interacted with the Mikaelsons in Mystic Falls, so other than the stories she’d heard and seeing Kol around, she had no real bias against the family. When your brother tries to kill you at five years old, the bar for dealing with evil family members goes sky high.
Instead of pouring her a glass of straight bourbon, she instead added some coke to it. Both to give the appearance of it looking like something other than a drink but also because she didn’t exactly want to serve it straight to a seventeen year old girl - even if this particular seventeen year old girl had a better tolerance than she did thanks to her genetic makeup.
It was her question that made her pause, though, and Liv tilted her head to the side with a ‘wellllll… maybe’ look on her face. “They’ve been known to do that from time to time,” she replied carefully. “Is it something you want to talk about?”
"Thanks," Hope said a little bit surprised that Liv gave her bourbon at all, sure it had coke in it but she would take it right now. She'd take just about anything to drink, even cheap beer if that had been her only option.
"The woman that is supposed to be the headmistress of the school at home just had me basically just torture her humanity-less husband." Hope held up her drink. "Cheers." She took a drink and put it down. "I don't know, I remember hearing stories growing up, and now living in Mystic Falls I guess I hear even more of them, and we all know..." Hope stopped. "I probably shouldn't be complaining."
“The woman who…” Liv frowned. “Wait, you mean Caroline?” That was the only person who made sense given what Liv knew of the future, and that Hope had mentioned ‘humanity-less husband’ on top of it. She didn’t like the sound of what Hope was saying. Not because of the implication of torturing a no-humanity Stefan, but Hope was just a kid and one of Josie’s friends. Nevermind who her parents were.
“Their agenda is generally the right agenda,” she shrugged. Most of the time she agreed with it, but that hadn’t always been the case. “But what do you mean you had to basically torture him? What did she ask you to do?”
Hope leaned back taking another sip studying Liv for a moment. Was their agenda usually right? She didn't know, but she also felt like she'd said too much.
"It's no big deal," she followed up with a smile not all that different from her father’s. "I've dealt with worse things," Hope added with a shrug starting to build up the walls she knew she should have kept in check to start with. Hope dropped saying another word as she took a sip of her drink.
Liv frowned at the change in how the conversation was going. At first it had felt like Hope felt comfortable enough talking to her about these, even if it was out of initial frustration, so she was a little surprised when she cut it off fairly quickly. “I meant that a little sarcastically by the way,” she said, trying to sound casual. “That they think they’re right all the time, so that’s the end of it.” Sometimes they were, sometimes they weren’t, but plenty of people had been caught in the middle.
“Is he alright?” She asked. “Stefan, I mean.” It wasn’t that Liv much cared what sort of pain Stefan without his humanity felt, but she actually did like him most of the time when he kept his humanity in tact. “Are you alright?”
Hope shrugged. “I know my family has done countless horrible things that no one should ever do or even think about doing, but they never pretended they were better than anyone because of it.” Hope sighed. “They owned it like a badge of misplaced honor sometimes, but they knew.” She frowned. “I don’t know, I just sometimes wonder about that group,” she said indicating the original Mystic Falls group.
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure Caroline will do anything to get him back, so my guess is he’ll be fine pretty soon.” She shrugged. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
"What's that old saying?" Liv started. "Don't throw stones in glass houses?" She shrugged. "There were a lot of those in Mystic Falls. Now I guess a few of them made it to Atlantis." Liv had been wiping down an area of the bar with a rag, but tossed it over into a bucket, leaning against the bar across from Hope.
"People will do a lot of crazy shit to help the people they care about whether it's the right thing to do or not." She'd done it and probably would do it again at some point. "And it can be hard to see the bigger picture when you're in the middle of it."
Liv reached for Hope's glass that was starting to get low and refilled it with the same combo as the first time. "It's okay if you aren't though, you know. You don't have to always be fine."
"Even kill themselves," Hope answered with a shrug looking down into her drink, Hope was aware of the crazy stuff people would do for the people they loved, it wasn't that part that was bothering her right now, it was that her family was hated for it while others were considered to be perfectly okay.
"It's not the what people will do for their loved ones, it is not admitting to the fact that... Nevermind." She shrugged. "I'm not making sense." She decided. She'd seen some of the comments towards Kol since she'd been here, and sure it wasn't much but she'd also read a lot of journals over the years.
"It's usually better to just be fine," she responded nodding a thanks for the second drink.
Even kill themselves? That statement seemed pretty personal. Liv wasn’t sure where that came from exactly, but to be honest, she hadn’t looked a lot into the Mikaelson family drama. It had been before her time in Mystic Falls, and she’d been dead long before Hope had ever come to town once the school was started. What she said did sort of ring true when it came to her brother, though. Luke might not outright killed himself, but he had to know that it would be a possibility. He’d done it for her. So she wouldn’t have lost in the merge with him.
“Yeah, maybe,” she said quietly but then shrugged. “Maybe for a while. But sooner or later people like us go from being fine or thinking we’re fine to being anything but fine and making a mess of things. It’s not up to me to tell you how to deal with whatever it is that’s bothering you, but I do know that shit does catch up to you sooner or later.”
Hope smiled, a soft sad smile.
“I’m a Mikaelson, I have centuries of things that are going to catch up with me,” sure, she wasn’t that old but her family was and she knew while the world celebrated her father’s demise there were still people out there that probably wanted to hold her accountable for his actions, besides, she was a Mikaelson witch, her family created the vampire race.
“Eventually probably. Apparently, it catches up with you no matter what you do.” Liv shrugged. From her own experience, family differences and dynamics carried on no matter if you were a part of it or not. At least that was what happened to her and her entire coven. Her brother hated her father, resented and hated her and Luke, so the entire family paid for it in the end.
“But it’s not something you need to worry about now. Now you’re just a kid living in a literal fantasy world…. and you happen to be fighting a war, by chance.” She smiled and shrugged. “Don’t let their bullshit get to you too much. Mystic Falls has a habit of following us around, but thankfully Atlantis likes to change things up now and then.”
Liv paused for a moment. “I didn’t know your family, some of them I might not wanted to cross paths with, but hey my family has its own issues. No judgement here if you ever want to talk about any of it with someone from home who isn’t super connected to any of it.”
Hope smirked. “Yeah, trade one world where monsters are real for a whole nother one where pretty much anything and everything can or will happen.” That was how Atlantis felt to her and she liked fighting the war, Hope liked having purpose.
“I guess the Gemini coven has its problems too,” Hope didn’t know all of them, but she knew some things. “Although I can’t say I know much about them, just Josie and Lizzie really and little things here and there.” She had heard how their mom had died and how Caroline ended up carrying them, Hope wondered for a moment if that was how Liv died but she wasn’t going to ask that.
“My family,” she paused. “Is complicated, and if you are on their good side, you’re fine really, but they can be fickle with that too,” Hope admitted. “Thanks,” she added with a small smile.
“You could say that,” Liv said with a smirk. Not that there was any Gemini coven left back home other than Josie and Lizzie. Even Kai was in hell or in some other prison dimension from what she’d been told. She wasn’t sure how the whole merge thing would affect the twins since it was just the two of them with no coven to die off if they didn’t go through with it, but she could only hope that they’d be alright and could figure something out when the time came. There wasn’t much she could do about it here since even if she did research, neither Josie, Hope, or Caroline would remember anything when they returned to Mystic Falls.
“Sounds like a lot of families, blood-related or not.” Liv shrugged. She knew better than most that life was a mix of grays rather than black and white. “And sure. It’s nice knowing Josie has a friend here, too.”
Hope nodded, she didn’t really feel like arguing that her family wasn’t exactly like a lot of families, in fact it was far from it, but that had more to do with their age and the complications they had or how her parents shouldn’t have died but were gone.
“Yeah I guess,” she said with a small smile. “It’s a little weird that Lizzie isn’t here,” Hope didn’t add that Lizzie hated her for some reason though.
“Yeah, I can imagine,” Liv nodded and paused what she was doing. “I wish she was here too.” As much as she’d been able to start getting to know Josie since her arrival, Liv wished she could have the same chance with Lizzie too. Asking Josie questions about her would never be the same as meeting her face to face.
“I’m sure Josie misses her.” Twins, especially Gemini twins, could be especially close. A fact Liv knew all too well sometimes. “There’s always a chance she might show up one day.”
Hope wasn’t sure she wanted Lizzie around but she wasn’t going to say that. Lizzie hated her and Hope still really didn’t understand why.
“I think it might be good for Josie, they’re kind of codependent, but I think enough time has passed that it’d be good for Josie for her to come,” Hope shrugged. “I don’t really know, but just by what I’ve seen and if I’m honest, Lizzie and I don’t exactly get along.”
“My brother and I could be the same way sometimes,” she offered. “Considering what some of their early lives were like, I guess I can understand why they're so close.” Though, no matter how connected she and Luke literally were, she was pretty sure some of the other group from Mystic Falls were as codependent as you could get. And she wasn't just thinking of the Salvatore brothers.
Liv frowned slightly. Ultimately, any issues between her niece and Hope were one of her business, but she couldn't help but wonder what the reason for that was. If something happened or if it was one those moments when personalities clash. “Sometimes people just don't get along, I guess.”
Hope simply nodded, she didn’t really have anything else she could say about it. She didn’t know why Lizzie hated her and she knew none of the kids at the Salvatore school really had an easy life at points. That was just part of being supernatural, at least that was what Hope assumed.
“Yeah, I just wish I knew why she hated me so much, but I guess I’ll never know.” Hope shrugged.
Liv didn’t say much else; she had no idea what her other niece didn’t like Hope even though it seemed like she and Josie got along just fine. Unless that was part of the problem - Lizzie saw Hope as a threat between her and her sister. That was just grasping at straws, though, so she shrugged and let the topic lie.
“One more,” she said and refilled her glass, though this time with more coke that alcohol. “But yeah, I’ve been on both sides to a degree when it comes to that group, so I get it. If you ever need anything or need to vent, you know where to find me.”
“Thanks,” Hope said with a small smile, she meant it too.