i am my parents' daughter

NEXUSVCRTI    ;      an independent and highly selective roleplay blog for HOPE MIKAELSON of cw’s the originals and legacies.  written by arrow.  multi-ship and multi-verse with a heavy emphasis on plotting. 

low-activity. mutually exclusive and private ; oc and duplicate friendly.  will contain highly triggering content and mature themes. must be 21+ to interact and follow. 

formerly cursedbcrn.  estab. june 2020. rebooted nov. 2023

the resident

Knowledge is your only weapon, and until now that’s always been enough. But you carry it like it’s something heavy, something you aren’t allowed to put down. You can’t leave yourself defenseless, but you’re so so tired. It’s a blessing and a curse, you’ve realized, to know the truths of this place and not be able to give them away. No one believes you, anyways, and you’ve learned not to waste your breath, not to scream your throat raw and broken to people you do not trust. So you keep it to yourself, like everything else. You grip these truths in your hands until they cut your knuckles and mar your palms, but at least now you can hold them at arm’s length when the walls start speaking.

But that was... literally decades ago. Life and trauma and pain has gotten in between them, and it's the first birthday since she's gotten back in touch with @foundationbuilt. Since everything had transpired between them.

She imagines that her place as chief party planner has been taken over sometime over the last several decades, and Hope isn't sure that's what either of them want anyways. To be reminded of a past they can never get back to. But it also doesn't seem right to let the day pass without acknowledging it.

It's why she's standing outside of her mother's house, a plain wrapped package in her hands. Inside is a scrapbook, worn and weathered with use, but the pages are filled with photographs, and Hope sketched out and painted seamlessly against the outline of the photo to fill the rest of the page, extending the backgrounds to show a wider perspective. They're snapshots of the things that Hope has seen and experienced over the years, brief moments that she wants to share with Hayley, even if her mother hadn't been there to witness it. The development over the years is apparent, showcasing different techniques and styles that she'd experimented with, a brief period where she'd done things only in charcoal. It's the closest thing she has to a running record of her life, beside the journal she carries with her everywhere.

Hope slips the package through the mail slot and turns to leave. She doesn't think she wants to be there when her mom finds the present. She's afraid of the rejection, that these pieces of our soul might get discarded like she herself once was. An unfair thought to Hayley, but one that the wounded child in Hope has never been able to silence. But there's a small message scrawled on the inside cover of the scrapbook.

HOPE AND MOTHERHOOD

While the universe makes a big deal about how vampires have to miss out on the magic that is parenthood, particularly when it comes to women, it’s really not something that is at the top of Hope’s priorities, particularly not at this stage of her life, and it’s also not been something she’s given a lot of thought to over the years. It also entirely ignores the many valid ways parenthood can be a thing, either via adoption or magically transplanting babies from dying witches into a vampire who is technically incapable of conceiving). Either way, Hope has no desire to become a mother any time soon, if at all.

Being praised as a miracle baby who never should have existed is not as inspiring to a child as some might think. Coupled with the near-constant death threats and the requirements to hide who she was from everyone she cared about, Hope saw very little merit in the way her childhood played out. More than anyone, she is aware of what that kind of life can do to a child, so it doesn’t make sense why she would want to bring a child into the world who would inherit the same problems and enemies. Everything that Hayley feared for Hope would be the same fears she has for her own child, and it just perpetuates a cycle that she's unwilling to put them through. 

Furthermore, during the course of the show, Hope is still very much a child, and idk about most of y’all, but motherhood wasn’t really at the top of my list when I was that age. I know for some people, that is their life goal and I’m not knocking that, but I just don’t see that for Hope at this stage. She has grown up with that life, with a preview of knowing exactly what people would do to hurt a child of hers, and she is too cynical to put them through that. She also just straight up wouldn’t want to do this without Hayley.

Hope, unlike the rest of the Mikaelsons, has a bit of a different take on family. At the end of the day, the Mikaelson relationship is one forged by blood. That’s why it is such a big deal when they accept Hayley unequivocally as a Mikaelson, because in over a thousand years, pretty much no one else has been able to be a part of that bond. Hope, despite all of her issues with Salvatore and its students, grew up with peers who eventually become friends. They become people who she would lay her life down for, even if it takes her a while to get there. To her, blood isn’t the end all be all. 

It makes sense why Rebekah is so adamant about having biological children, because her entire life has been defined by a family vow bound by blood. Also, for a great majority of her life, women were defined by their ability to have children, and that kind of social thinking doesn’t disappear overnight. But Hope is born of a completely different generation, with a very different upbringing. She has been taught that family can extend beyond just blood relationships, and that it’s okay to embrace that. 

HOPE’S TIME IN MALIVORE

Hope doesn’t talk about her time in Malivore at all as a general rule, though she may open up to some people about it once their relationship has progressed to a certain point. Even then, she is reluctant to relive the time she spent in the pit. The trauma caused by her time in Malivore is deeper than what we see in canon, and is something that she remains traumatized by to this day, even if she doesn’t admit it. 

Time passes differently in Malivore compared to the real world, heightened by the fact that without a day/night cycle, it is near impossible to tell how much time is passing. What little sleep she manages to get only serves to further disorient her. By the time Malivore spits her back out into the real world, Hope has no idea how much time has passed until she saw the date (and honestly, she was surprised it hadn’t been as long as she thought).

Malivore has the ability to conjure visions and images to torment the things that he consumes. A few times, Hope falls victim to those scenes of happier times with her family, or having versions of them that kept her company. However, all of these end badly, forcing Hope to relive her worst memories before the cycle begins over again. Between these visions, Hope also has to deal with Clarke popping up randomly and dodging monsters that are trying to hunt her. 

After she escapes the pit (regardless of verse), Hope does what she can to avoid reliving that darkness. She has nightmares about it frequently, and has a new aversion to darkness that she hesitates to admit (because being afraid of the dark is something she should have grown out of years ago). Despite hating that she had a roommate when she got back to Salvatore, she was also somewhat grateful for it because it helped to quickly knock her out of the terror that nightmares could put her in (which could lead to her hurting someone if she isn’t careful). She knows she isn’t alone anymore. 

dark stormy blue

Sinking ships, raging seas and tumultuous hearts, love isn't easy for you. It's a struggle, a constant inner fight of should I? Can I? Do I? Feelings are hard and they rumble inside you in a dissatisfied mess that begs to be let out. Your heart screams and cries inside you and you… You can't, you won't. You're scared. And love is scary, it's hard and sometimes it just doesn't work out. People leave, people hurt, people change their minds. And you and your cold stormy heart yearn for the calmness, for the distance, to be allowed and able to simply not feel. And yet, you do. It rages, it fights and storms inside you and you try to keep it down, keep it quiet, to feel pretending not to. It's the burn of childhood friends growing apart, of parents that aren't quite there, of relationships that burn out. So you snuff it down with water, cold and calming and blue, blue, blue. But being loved by you is blue too, just not in that way. It's the soothing, embracing feeling of floating, the moment when you sink down bellow the waves and become one with the water, with everything. It's the balance, the dramatic yet calming sound of waves that crash against a rocky shore. You're the good and the bad, the violence of the storm and the watery peace right after. You're the blue, blue feeling and loving you is watery tears, yelled confessions that no one will hear and burying your feelings in a deep watery grave never to be found out about. Your love is dark stormy blue, it's vast and deep and all encompassing, it's safety in the surface of danger, it's trusting the unruly abyss and yet I'd gladly risk drowning just to feel what it's like being loved by you.