Chapter Text
Josie knew she was no longer in the forest of her own mind right away. This was different. The woods were much warmer than this, hot and thick with the remnants of fire and magic. The darkness liked fire a lot.
Or maybe that was just Josie.
Maybe that was what they had in common.
If Josie knew fire, the darkness knew smoke.
There was no fire or smoke, now, though. Just air. For the first time in a long time, the siphoner felt like she could breathe. Soot no longer lingered in the back of her throat, ash didn’t cling to the inside of her nose.
Yet, something felt...wrong. Off.
It was colder, now, too. The tips of Josie’s fingers were chilled to the bone. She tried to move them, but they were numb.
She shivered, and opened her eyes.
She was in her father’s office. That was the first thing she noticed. The second thing was that Alaric was also there, sitting at his desk with his head in his hands.
She thought he looked sad, when he didn’t think she could see him.
“Dad?”
Alaric looked up from his desk, and she saw that his eyes were bloodshot and puffy, like he had been crying. The corners of his lips forced up into a smile when he saw her, but Josie could tell something was wrong. The smile fell within seconds, like he didn’t have the strength to keep faking it.
“Jo?” His voice seemed to echo. “Is that you?”
The next thing she knew, Alaric was standing up and Josie was swept into his arms, the crushing weight of them nearly suffocating her. He held on too tight, too desperately, but the siphoner hadn’t been hugged in weeks, so her own grip only tightened.
Then, she was reminded of the cold. It clawed at her insides and tore at her chest, right over the space where her heart should be. That was what it was, she realized, what she had been feeling since she opened her eyes.
She felt empty. Cold.
She sunk into her father’s hold for warmth, but his arms had chilled in her absence, and she found it only made her feel even colder.
She stepped back and pulled away, looking around. Where was her sister? Where were her friends? “Where is everyone? How—“
How am I here?
Last she remembered, she was exiled to the walls of her own mind, and she had only herself to blame.
She was the one who had let dark magic corrupt her, who had started using it for nothing and then one day, couldn’t stop for anything. By becoming everything she had ever wanted—powerful, strong, untouchable—she had also lost it all.
“What happened?” Josie’s eyes darted wildly around the office. It was oddly still. Quiet. The silence unnerved her.
She forced herself to stop searching when her eyes caught a dark shadow in the corner of the room, feeling fear choke her up with the thought that it might be the darkness chasing after her.
She looked back to her dad, but Alaric’s eyes were wet and clenched shut. A tear slipped through and fell down his cheek. Was he in pain?
“Maybe you should sit down,” the man said, but Josie saw the way his jaw trembled, heard the way his voice cracked around the words. He kept rubbing his hand over his chest like it was hurting, like he was struggling to breathe.
“No, I...” Josie opened her mouth and closed it. She was so confused. What happened? “How am I here? I thought she...”
She thought the darkness had taken over her for good. Even now, Josie was still wearing her damn clothes. It made her skin crawl. “How am I back?”
Her father’s jaw clenched. When he looked at his daughter, his gaze was everywhere but nowhere, unseeing but seeing. His throat bobbed underneath his beard. “Because she got what she wanted.”
He sounded angry. Bitter. Far away. Like they weren’t even standing in the same room.
“Wha-what do you mean?” Josie asked. Dread formed a pit in her stomach. Her dad couldn’t look her in the eye.
“You won the Merge, Josie,” he said. Josie sputtered out her words. Her mind swarmed. She struggled to pull air into her aching lungs.
“No. No. I-I don’t understand, I don’t understand,” she murmured softly, begging, gasping for air. She shook her head, in part to deny it and in part to clear her thoughts. Heat crawled up her throat. Her chest grew tight. Tears built up in her eyes. “I wasn’t even here, I didn’t do anything. I don’t understand. Please, Dad, I don’t understand, I—“
Her heart shook in her chest. Where was Lizzie? Where was she? Where was her sister? Josie tried to search for her within herself, but she could no longer feel her. The twin bond she had grown so used to, so familiar with, was gone.
Empty. Cold.
“I need you to take a deep breath for me.” Her father grabbed her by the shoulders. It wasn’t enough for her to look him in the eye. The tears consumed her. She couldn’t stop crying, but she couldn’t understand why all the same. Everything was fine. Everything was okay. She tried to make herself believe the words, but with every passing second she struggled to deny reality. “Breathe. Breathe.”
She couldn’t. She couldn’t. Her lungs were shaking and she fucking couldn’t.
“Your sister is gone.”
Josie let out a sound between a sob and a whimper, and pushed her father away. She couldn’t bear the sight of him. She couldn’t bear the sight of him looking at her. She couldn’t bear anything at all.
God, Lizzie.
How many times had she sat in this office with her sister? How many memories had they shared together here? It didn’t feel real.
It didn’t feel—
The siphoner dug her nails into her hairline and dragged them down her pale face, leaving deep red lines in their wake. She let out a scream that shook the school. God. She needed to feel like she was reaching down her throat and clawing at her heart, like she was ripping at herself, tearing herself apart, or maybe that was just her sister.
Maybe that was just what it felt like when you killed your own twin.
Oh, God, the world was so cold, now. So empty.
Had she suffered? Josie wondered. No. She knew. The darkness would have made sure of it. It would have made sure her sister died in pain.
Josie ran her hands back over her face a second time, forgetting that they were still covered in her sister’s blood. Her lips parted with another silent scream, vision going crimson red.
Then black. And—
Darkness.
Josie fainted.
It was not her father that caught her.
Hope.
—
Josie’s head spun. Pounded. Whatever the word was. She tried to open her eyes, but they felt glued shut, like someone had stitched the lashes of them together. Maybe it was because she had been crying, or maybe she was dead.
She hoped she was dead. She couldn’t live without her sister. She didn’t even want to think about it. She hoped it was all a dream, and when she opened her eyes, she would be back in the woods. Yes! She would be back in the forest!
Josie shifted her body around to experiment, but she didn’t move an inch. She was trapped beneath something. She didn’t know what it was. It felt like...bed sheets?
She blinked a single eye open, and then immediately shut it again. Light swarmed her vision and blinded her. It only made her headache worse. She mumbled something unintelligible and tried to move again.
“...I think she’s waking up...”
The voice came from Josie’s right. It was familiar but the siphoner couldn’t place it.
She sneaked another peek through her eyelids, and finally her vision adjusted to the lights. She noticed that it was night, and all the windows were dark. She still couldn’t move, though, and when she glanced down, she saw that someone had tucked her into a bed.
An infirmary bed. She was in the hospital wing of the school. The voice she had heard before belonged to the head nurse of the boarding school, Wilma. Another nurse Josie didn’t know the name of was on the other side of her bed, tinkling with some of the machines.
Oh, God. Josie gulped. She was hooked to an IV. And she was wearing a dress.
Not the usual black one that the darkness had taken a liking to, but a pretty ball gown with multiple shades of pink. It barely fit underneath the sheets.
Huh. Had someone taken off her clothes? No. That didn’t make sense. Why would they do that just to make her wear something else? What was the point of this dress?
Josie also noticed that the dress was wet. It clung to her skin uncomfortably. Her hair was wet, too. She tried to touch it, but her limbs were too heavy to move so she just stopped.
“Hi, honey.” Wilma was now leaning over her with searching, kind eyes. Her voice was too loud. Josie had to clench her eyes shut to quell the headache pulsing at her temples. “How are you feeling?”
The siphoner opened her mouth. Or, at least, she tried to. It was dry like cotton balls, and there was a disgusting taste on her tongue. Like lake water. But that couldn’t be right.
Right?
She swallowed and tried again.
“I...” Nothing else came out. She wanted to ask about Lizzie, but she feared the answer. She had somehow deluded herself into thinking that the Merge had just been some cruel nightmare.
“Okay.” Thank God Wilma was patient. She always had been in her decade with the school. That was what Josie loved most about her. “Can you remember anything about what happened, honey?”
Josie paused. She blinked. Her mind felt foggy. Empty. Cold. What had she been thinking about?
“Uh...” Her eyes threatened to flutter shut again. She wanted to go to sleep. It felt like she had been awake for centuries.
“Let’s start with your name,” Wilma supplied helpfully. Her eyebrows furrowed together in concern. “Can you tell me that?”
Oh. Yeah. Josie knew that.
“Josie,” she said. The two nurses breathed out a sigh of relief. “Josie Saltzman.”
The two nurses immediately went rigid. Josie got the feeling she had done something wrong. She watched Wilma and the other nurse share a worried look.
“Saltzman?” The nurse frowned. “No, honey, you’re Josie Parker.”
Josie Parker? What the hell?
The siphoner shook her head. That wasn’t right. She tried to sit up but it only made her head spin even more. One of the nurses placed a hand on her shoulder to steady her, but Josie was so out of it that she didn’t know which one had done so.
Josie Parker. She repeated the name several times in her head, but it still didn’t make sense. It didn’t make any sense at all.
“Okay, why don’t we try a different question?” Wilma asked kindly. “Do you know how old you are?”
Another simple question, yet Josie felt unease creep up her spine. What if she answered it wrong again?
She waited a beat, and then in a small voice, she said, “Seventeen.”
Seventeen. It was her birthday today. Or maybe it was no longer today? Maybe the Merge had happened years ago. Oh, God. Josie felt her eyes tear up again. She killed her sister on their birthday.
No. She didn’t. She didn’t.
(She tried to convince herself.)
“I just turned today, actually,” she began to babble. She probably sounded crazy. The nurses looked at her like she was. “Lizzie did, too. Do you, do you know where my sister is?”
She sat up again but the nurses moved her back down. They began to talk over her.
“What are you thinking?” the nurse whose name Josie didn’t know asked.
“Retrograde amnesia with confabulation?” Wilma wondered out loud. “It should be temporary.”
A contemplative silence followed. Josie struggled to sit up.
“Go alert Headmaster Saltzman and Headmistress Salvatore that Miss Parker is awake, please,” Wilma said, finally. Josie’s eyes widened. Her mom was here? It had been months since she had last seen her.
She watched the other nurse nod and leave. Wilma looked back at the siphoner and sighed. “Don’t worry, dear, we’ll get this sorted out. For the time being, you should know that you’re fifteen. Do you want us to call your mom for you?”
Fifteen? No. That wasn’t possible. The siphoner forced her head to still lest she shake it in denial again.
And what did Wilma mean? Hadn’t she just called her mom for her already? Unless Headmistress Salvatore wasn’t her mom, but then that would mean...
She was no longer Josie Saltzman.
But how was that possible? Had she somehow switched places with whoever this fifteen-year-old Josie Parker girl was? It sounded silly. Josie almost laughed.
Her confusion must have shown on her face, because Wilma didn’t press the issue. She didn’t ask about her mom again, and instead grabbed a clipboard by Josie’s bedside table and wrote something down.
Josie watched her for a moment, before her curiosity overwhelmed her. She didn’t have a choice when her mouth opened on its own.
“How did I get here?” she asked softly.
She tried to remember, but the more she thought about it the more the answer evaded her—like the fleeting memory of a dream—until suddenly she could not even recall the question itself.
This time, when the siphoner sat up, Wilma didn’t stop her. She frowned and set the clipboard down. She didn’t say anything for a long time. Until—
“You really don’t remember, do you?”
“N-No, I don’t. What happened?” Josie asked again. She shivered. It was so cold.
“You fell into the lake by the dock,” the nurse said. “Miss Marshall saved you.”
Marshall? Josie hadn’t heard that name in years. “Who?”
There was movement by the door. Josie looked up and gasped quietly. A lone figure stood in the shadows, dripping water onto the floor. She had wild, auburn hair that stopped at her chest and dark, blue eyes that stopped Josie’s heart.
For just a second.
“Hope?”
Hope Marshall stared back and said nothing at all. She had a thin towel wrapped around her shoulders, but it did nothing to hide the fact that she was soaked to the bone. She wasn’t wearing a dress like Josie was, but instead an older version of the school uniform that the siphoner hadn’t seen anyone wear in years. She looked younger, too, like the stress of fighting Malivore monsters hadn’t yet taken a toll on her.
The sleeves of her white button-up were rolled up to her elbows, and it was so damp that the shirt was nearly see-through. Heart in throat, Josie swallowed and glanced away, feeling oddly flushed. She saw that the other girl wasn’t wearing any shoes, and the dark slacks of her uniform stuck to her skin like glue.
At last, after several long moments passed, Hope gave a stiff nod. Her intense gaze never left Josie, and it lingered on her like a burn. The siphoner felt unnerved by it. She looked down at her lap and tried to collect her thoughts.
So, not only was she no longer Josie Saltzman, but Hope Mikaelson was still Hope Marshall in this world. Did that mean that no one knew Hope was a tribrid yet, and that the girl was still hiding her identity? And if so, did that also mean that her parents hadn’t died yet? Or did it simply mean that she was an entirely different person altogether?
It begged the question:
Who was Josie Parker, and what had she been doing with Hope Marshall at the lake?
“Josie!” There was a frantic voice at the door. It came from a blonde wearing an elegant, blue dress. She pushed passed Hope and ran to Josie’s bedside. “Are you okay?! I should have known something was wrong when I couldn’t find you at the party.”
Lizzie.
Josie’s breath caught. It felt like relief.