**HOPE**
Hope woke up at noon with a pulse she could feel in her teeth.
She lay still for a long moment, staring at the ceiling. Her wrist didn't hurt. When she held it up to the light coming through the curtains, there wasn't a mark on it, only smooth skin, as if last night had happened to someone else. Her mouth tasted like pennies, even though she'd brushed her teeth twice before bed while her father stood outside the bathroom door like a prison guard.
*His* blood. He'd bitten his thumb and pressed it to her wrist, and she'd felt it go in, hot as whiskey.
Her mom was asleep in the armchair in the corner, still in yesterday's clothes, her head tipped against the wall. She'd come in around one in the morning, once her strength had come back, and lain down on the bed next to Hope. She hadn't said a word, but her arm had stayed heavy across Hope's stomach, as if someone might pull her out through the window. Sometime before dawn she'd moved to the chair to keep watch. She'd lost that fight about an hour ago.
Nobody had asked Hope *why*.
She was glad. She didn't have an answer that wouldn't make her mother cry.
*Because I felt it fill.* When his teeth were in her wrist, the thread between them had gone hot and bright, and she'd gone looking inside him again. She'd found the hunger, and for one second she'd felt it *stop*. The empty stadium had lit up, every seat full and every light blazing.
She had done that. Her blood. Her.
Hope got up very quietly, stepped over her mother's boots, and went downstairs for air.
The courtyard was a wreck. The fountain was split down the middle, and water had spread across the flagstones in a wide, shallow puddle. The gate was still a puddle of cooled iron slumped across the entrance. Aunt Freya was asleep upright on the stairs with a grimoire open in her lap. Hope could hear her father and Uncle Elijah arguing in low voices behind the closed door of the study.
*...take her to the Salvatore School. Caroline's wards...*
*...he walked through Freya's like tissue paper, Elijah...*
*...then somewhere further...*
Hope stood by the ruined fountain with her arms wrapped around herself and listened to them decide where to send her.
The hook under her ribs gave a slow, lazy tug.
She turned around.
He was sitting on top of the courtyard wall, right above the melted gate. He had one knee pulled up and was eating an apple, wearing the red hoodie again. He looked as relaxed as if he'd been sitting there for an hour. He probably had.
"Hi," Stiles said around a mouthful of apple.
Hope's heart slammed. "Are you *insane*? My dad's right there."
"Yeah, I heard. Salvatore School. That's the one with the blonde headmistress, right? Caroline?" He made a face. "She sounds like she'd make me fill out a form."
"You need to *leave*."
"I'm gonna. That's actually why I'm here." He tossed the apple core over his shoulder into the street and dropped off the wall. He landed in the puddle without a sound, the water barely rippling. "Okay. So. I've been thinking."
"That's never good."
"Rude. Accurate, but rude." He came toward her, slow and easy, hands in his pocket. "Here's the thing, Hope. You keep *looking*. Every time. You go poking around in there like there's supposed to be something in the empty room. And your face does this *thing*." He pointed at her. "That. That right there. Like I'm a puppy that got hit by a car."
"That's because you *are* a puppy that got hit by a car."
"See, but I'm *not*." He stopped a foot away. Up close, she could see his eyes, brown and clear and very awake. "Nothing's broken, Hope. I keep telling you. Nobody believes me. And you're never gonna believe me. Not from out there. Not with your dad pacing hallways and your mom sleeping in chairs and everybody deciding where to ship you off to next."
The hook under her ribs was pulling so hard it ached.
"So I'm gonna show you," Stiles said.
"Show me *what*?"
He looked at her for a long moment, and for once he didn't smile.
"You're gonna hate me," he said simply. "Like, *really* hate me. And that's fine. That's allowed. But after you do, you're gonna understand why I did it."
The study door banged open.
"*HOPE!*"
It was her father's voice, a roar that shook the windows. She turned toward it on instinct, and that was her mistake.
Stiles's arm went around her waist. The courtyard vanished.
---
**STILES**
Honestly, the carrying part was the easiest bit.
She weighed nothing. She kicked the whole way, of course. She tried to hex him twice, and he ate both hexes like Pop Rocks, and she called him a name he was pretty sure she'd learned from her dad. He went over the rooftops fast, faster than anyone could follow, the Quarter blurring into a streak of wrought iron and hanging ferns and startled pigeons. Behind them, far off and fading, Klaus Mikaelson was roaring his daughter's name across the whole city.
"He's really loud," Stiles said. "Does he always do that?"
"Put me *down*!"
"In a sec. We're almost there."
"*Where* is there?"
He landed in the alley behind the bar and set her on her feet. She immediately swung at him. He let her connect, because it seemed only fair. It was a really good punch. His head snapped sideways and something in his jaw crunched and then un-crunched.
"Ow," he said. "Okay. Good form. Your dad teach you that?"
"My *mom*."
"That tracks."
She tried to run. He caught her by the hood of her jacket without even looking, the way you'd grab a toddler making a break for the street.
"Hope. I can hear your heartbeat from three miles away. Where are you gonna go?"
She rounded on him, eyes blazing, auburn hair wild from the wind. "*Why?* Why are you *doing* this?"
"I told you. I'm gonna show you." He pulled open the back door of the bar and gestured her through, like a maître d'. "After you."
---
**HOPE**
It was the bar.
She knew it the second she walked in. It had neon beer signs and a wobbling ceiling fan. There was a pool table with a torn felt corner, and someone had scrubbed the stains out of it. Not well. There was still a dark, blotchy shadow across the green, shaped roughly like a man.
The bar was full of people.
Hope stopped dead in the doorway.
There were maybe fifteen of them, sitting at tables and on stools and in the ripped vinyl booths along the wall. They were ordinary people: a couple in matching LSU shirts, a woman in scrubs, an old man in a fishing hat, a college kid with a backpack, two girls in sundresses and Mardi Gras beads. They were all sitting perfectly still, hands folded on the tables in front of them, smiling pleasantly at nothing.
Every single one of them turned their head to look at her at the exact same moment.
"*Hi!*" they said together, cheerfully.
Hope's skin crawled.
"Oh my God," she whispered.
"Right?" Stiles came in behind her and let the door swing shut. "Took me all morning. I had to go find the right mix. Tourists, locals, a nurse, a guy who runs a bait shop. Kind of a *sampler platter*." He walked past her to the bar and hopped up to sit on it, sneakers dangling. "This is Dwayne's bar. Remember Dwayne? Bad liar? Terrible beard? Anyway, Dwayne's not using it, so I figured, finders keepers."
"Let them go."
"No."
"Stiles, *let them go*."
"Hope, I literally just said no." He snapped his fingers. "Hey, Gary."
The old man in the fishing hat stood up. His smile didn't change at all.
"Do the chicken dance, Gary."
Gary began to do the chicken dance.
He did it with total commitment: elbows flapping, knees bending, butt wiggling, his face completely serene. Nobody else in the bar reacted. They just kept smiling.
"*Stop it!*"
"Okay, Gary, you can stop." Gary stopped and sat back down, still smiling. Stiles looked at Hope. "See? They're fine. They're having a great time. I compelled them to have a great time. That's more than most people get on a Tuesday."
"It's *Thursday*."
"Is it?" He frowned. "Huh. Okay, see, that's the time thing again."
Hope's magic surged up into her hands, hot and furious. The neon signs flickered. She threw it at him, the whole wave of it, a spell of pure force that should have put him through the wall.
He opened his palm and swallowed it.
He didn't even flinch. He just made a little *mm* noise, like tasting a sauce.
"You're getting stronger," he said. "Is that the anger? Anger's good. Keep that."
"I'm going to *kill* you."
"You're really not. But I love the energy." He slid off the bar and came toward her. She backed up until her shoulders hit the wall. "Okay. Here's the thing I came here to show you. You ready? This is gonna be a lot."
"Don't touch me."
"Hope." His voice went soft. It wasn't gentle, exactly, but it was quiet, and serious in a way she'd never heard from him. "Last night I bit my thumb and put my blood in your wrist. Remember?"
The blood went out of her face.
She remembered. The hot-whiskey feeling under her skin. The pennies in her mouth this morning.
She knew what it meant. Every Mikaelson knew. It was the thing no one in her family ever said out loud, the dormant part of her. It was the one piece of the tribrid that had never woken up, because it could only wake one way.
"No," Hope said. "No. Stiles, *no*..."
"You're gonna hate me," he said again, almost kindly. "And that's fine."
"*Please*..."
He put his hands on either side of her face.
She had a single second to see his eyes, brown and calm and absolutely certain.
Then there was a sharp, bright *crack*. It was the loudest sound she'd ever heard.
After that there was nothing at all.
---
**STILES**
He caught her before she hit the floor.
Her head lolled against his arm. Her eyes were open, green and glassy and fixed on nothing. There was no heartbeat. For the first time since he'd walked into that courtyard, the loudest thing in the city had gone completely silent.
It was *weird*.
He stood there for a second in the middle of Dwayne's bar, holding her, listening to fifteen compelled heartbeats thump along peacefully. Hers wasn't among them. The thread was still there, but it had gone thin and cold, like a phone line with nobody on the other end.
He didn't like it.
He noted that. He filed it away the way you'd notice a weird noise your car was making. Then he carried her across the room and laid her out on the pool table, right over the dark stain where Ray had been. He straightened her jacket. He pushed her hair off her face.
"Okay," he told the bar. "Nobody touch her."
"*Okay!*" the bar said cheerfully.
Stiles hopped back up on the bar, pulled a bottle of Jameson off the shelf behind him, and settled in to wait.
It took almost two hours.
He spent the time productively. He had Gary teach the college kid the chicken dance. He had the girls in the sundresses rank every guy they'd ever dated from worst to best. That was genuinely one of the most entertaining things he'd ever heard, and he was going to use "a dentist named Todd who owned a snake" as a threat for the rest of his life. He had the nurse tell him about the grossest thing she'd ever seen at work. It was pretty gross. He gave her a seven out of ten.
He didn't eat anybody. That was important. He needed them fresh.
And the whole time, he kept one ear on the pool table. He listened for it the way you'd listen for your name in a crowded room.
At 3:47 in the afternoon, the thread went hot again.
It came all at once, a flare of heat and light that nearly knocked him off the bar. On the pool table, Hope Mikaelson's back arched off the felt, and she dragged in a huge, ragged, screaming breath.
Stiles grinned so wide his face hurt.
"*There* she is."
---
**HOPE**
Everything was too loud.
That was the first thing. The ceiling fan was a jet engine. The neon signs buzzed like hornets inside her skull. She could hear the refrigerator behind the bar, the ice machine, the traffic three streets over, a dog barking somewhere across the river. She could hear...
*Heartbeats.*
Fifteen of them, all around her. They were slow and steady and warm, *thump-thump, thump-thump*, pouring through her ears like a river.
She rolled off the pool table and hit the floor on her hands and knees. She retched, but nothing came up. Her gums *hurt*. They felt like something was trying to push its way out through them, a pressure behind her teeth so fierce it made her eyes water.
"Hey. Hey. Easy." Sneakers appeared in her vision. He was crouching in front of her. "Deep breaths. Well, you don't need them anymore. But it helps. Trust me."
"What did you *do*?"
"You know what I did."
She did.
She was dead. She had died on the floor of Dwayne's bar with his hands on her face, and now she was lying here with her gums splitting and fifteen heartbeats screaming in her ears.
"I'm going to kill you," Hope whispered. "I'm going to *kill* you."
"Yeah, you said. Still can't. Still love the energy." He tilted his head. "Okay. So, quick rundown, because you're on a clock. Your vampire side's awake, but it's not *locked in* yet. You know how this works. Your whole family's vampires. You've got to feed. Human blood. Soon, like, in the next couple of hours. Or you don't finish the transition, and then you die for real. No coming back, no loopholes." He glanced around the bar. "Luckily, I brought snacks."
"No."
"Hope."
"*No*. I'm not... I won't..."
"Okay, so, that's the part I kind of need you to do."
She lunged at him. She didn't mean to. Her body just *moved*, faster than it had ever moved before, a blur across the floor. She slammed into him, and they both went down hard against the bar. The bottles rattled, and her fist was drawn back.
Stiles lay there under her, grinning up at her like she'd given him a present.
"*Oh*, you're fast," he said. "You're *so* fast. Look at you."
She hit him. His nose broke. It snapped back into place before her fist had finished moving away.
"You *killed* me!"
"I know."
"You broke my neck! I was begging you!"
"I know. I was there." He didn't try to stop her. "Hit me again if you want. Seriously. It's fine."
She hit him again, then again. She hit him until her knuckles split open and healed, split and healed. She was sobbing, great ugly heaving sobs, and he just lay there and *let* her, his head snapping sideways with every punch, still grinning, not even a little bit sorry.
When she finally ran out of strength and slumped over him, shaking, he reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear.
"Better?" he said.
"I *hate* you."
"Yeah." He nodded. "I know. That's the first part."
---
**STILES**
He let her sit on the floor against the bar and cry for a few minutes. It seemed like the kind of thing you should let a person do.
Honestly, it was a lot. She cried like she did everything else, loudly and completely, with her whole body. He'd never been good with criers. Scott used to cry during *Marley & Me*. Stiles had spent every viewing of that movie very carefully looking at the ceiling.
But the heartbeats were getting to her. He could see it. Her head kept turning toward the tables. It was a little jerk, like a dog hearing a can opener. Her eyes were starting to go. They were rimmed with gold, then red, and something was flickering under her skin.
"Okay," he said gently, once her breathing had gone ragged in a different way. "It's time."
"I can't."
"You can."
"I don't *want* to."
"Hope." He crouched next to her. "Look at me."
She looked at him. Her eyes were full red now, blazing, and there were tiny dark veins crawling out beneath them.
"You know what the worst part about being you was?" he said. "Even before me? You spent your whole life with everybody telling you what you were. What you were supposed to be. Good. Careful. Controlled. Don't let the wolf out. Don't let the magic out. Don't be your dad." He tilted his head toward the tables. "Nobody ever let you just *feel* it. Nobody ever let you find out."
"Find out *what*?"
"What it feels like when it goes quiet." He pointed at his own chest. "That thing you keep looking for in me? The guilt? The broken part? It's not broken. It's *quiet*. And you're never gonna understand that until you've felt it yourself."
He stood up and snapped his fingers.
"Hey, Marcus."
The college kid with the backpack stood up. He was maybe twenty, with shaggy hair and a Tulane hoodie, and he was still smiling.
"Come here, buddy."
Marcus came. He stopped a few feet from Hope and stood there pleasantly.
Stiles took the kid's wrist, bit his own thumbnail sharp, and drew a quick line across the kid's forearm.
The blood welled up bright red.
Hope made a sound Stiles had never heard a person make. It was half a sob and half a growl, and it came from deep in her chest.
"That's it," Stiles murmured. "That's the one."
"Stiles, *please*..."
"You don't have to kill him," he said. "You just have to drink. The rest's up to you. I'm not gonna stop you. And I'm not gonna make you stop, either."
She stared at the blood.
Her whole body was shaking. Her fangs had come down, small and sharp. She was trying so hard. He could see her trying, every muscle locked, every ounce of her fighting it.
He'd have found it sweet, if he found things sweet.
"Hope," he said softly. "It's okay."
She broke.
---
**HOPE**
It was the best thing she had ever tasted.
It was warm and rich and *alive*. It flooded her mouth and went straight down into her chest and *exploded*, like a sunrise, like the first breath after being underwater too long. Every nerve she had lit up at once. The pain in her gums was gone. The noise in her ears was gone. The screaming hunger that had been clawing at her ribs since she woke up just *stopped*.
She had her hands locked around Marcus's arm and her mouth on the cut. She was drinking, drinking, drinking, and she couldn't have stopped if the whole world had been on fire.
She didn't want to stop.
Distantly, somewhere very far away, she could hear his heartbeat, Marcus's heartbeat, the college kid in the Tulane hoodie with the shaggy hair. It was slowing. *Thump... thump... thump...* She could hear it slowing, and she could feel it slowing under her lips, and some small, faraway part of her was screaming *stop, stop, stop, stop*...
She didn't stop.
*Thump.*
*...thump.*
And then it stopped on its own.
She stayed there for a long moment with her mouth on his arm, her hands still wrapped around his wrist, the last warmth draining out of him and into her.
Then she let go.
Marcus slid to the floor at her feet. His eyes were open. He was still smiling. The compulsion had held right to the end, and he was smiling at the ceiling fan with blood on his sleeve.
Hope stared down at him.
She waited for it: the horror, the guilt, the wave that should have crushed her flat. It was coming. It had to be coming. She'd just killed someone. She'd just killed a *kid*. It was right there, waiting to hit her. She could feel it standing behind a door somewhere.
It didn't hit.
It was just... quiet.
It wasn't empty. It wasn't *gone*. She could still feel it back there, the horror and the grief and the screaming. But it was muffled, like hearing a party through a wall. And in front of it, filling up everything, was the warm, bright, blazing *fullness*. The noise was gone. The hunger was gone. The pull under her ribs had gone still and calm and satisfied. For the first time in her whole life, nothing inside her was fighting anything.
It was the empty stadium with every light on.
"Oh," Hope whispered. "Oh, *God*."
---
**STILES**
He watched her understand.
He watched it happen across her face in real time. There was the horror, then the waiting, then the confusion when the wave didn't hit the way it was supposed to. Then there was something else entirely, something slow and dawning and absolutely *terrifying*.
The thread between them went hot and bright, brighter than it had ever been. He felt her on the other end of it. It wasn't her poking around in his cabinets this time. She wasn't checking corners or looking for the broken thing.
She was just *there*, standing in the empty room next to him, looking around.
*Oh*, she was thinking. He could feel her thinking it. *Oh. This is what it's like.*
"Yeah," Stiles said quietly. "That's it. That's what I've been trying to tell you."
She looked up at him. There was blood on her mouth and down her chin, and her eyes were still red, burning.
"It's quiet," she said. Her voice was hollow with shock. "It's so *quiet*."
"I know."
"I killed him."
"Yep."
"And it's *quiet*."
"That's the part nobody tells you." He crouched in front of her again, careful not to step in the blood. "Everybody acts like it's supposed to be this huge, awful, crushing thing. And for some people, sure, maybe it is. But you just felt it, Hope. You felt what it's like when the noise stops." He tapped her chest right over her heart, which had started beating again, slow and steady and *new*. "That's not broken. That's not a monster. That's just... *free*."
She stared at him.
"This is why you did it," she said slowly. "You wanted me to stop looking at you like there's something wrong with you."
"That's part of it."
"What's the other part?"
He thought about lying. He genuinely did, for about half a second. But he'd been honest about all the murder so far, and he didn't see why he should start lying now.
"Your dad was gonna send you away," he said. "Somewhere far. Somewhere with more wards and more witches and more people telling you what you are. And I'd have found you. I'd have found you anywhere. But you'd have been *breakable*. You'd have been out there getting older and getting hurt, and one day some hunter with a crossbow gets lucky. And then I'm back to eating garbage for the rest of forever." He shrugged. "So now you're not breakable. Now you're gonna last. That's all. That's the whole thing."
"That's the most selfish thing I've ever heard."
"Yeah," he agreed cheerfully. "I'm very selfish. It's in the brochure."
She looked at him for a long, long moment. Then she looked down at Marcus, smiling at the ceiling fan. She looked around at the fourteen others still sitting at their tables with their hands folded, smiling at nothing, heartbeats thumping along like a warm, steady drumline.
He watched her hear them. He watched her head turn.
"I hate you," Hope said. It came out quiet and steady and very, very certain.
"I know," Stiles said.
"I'm always going to hate you."
"Maybe."
"But I understand." She swallowed. Blood caught in the corner of her mouth. "I understand now. Why you're like this. Why you don't..." She stopped. "I understand."
Stiles grinned.
"See?" he said softly. "Told you."
---
**HOPE**
She heard her father before she saw him.
It came from far away and got closer: a roar that shook the ground, the thunder of feet on rooftops, her mother's howl somewhere behind it. They were coming. Of course they were coming. They'd followed the trail across the whole Quarter, and they were going to come through that door any second. They were going to see her sitting on the floor of Dwayne's bar with a dead boy at her feet and blood all over her mouth.
Hope pushed herself up and stood. Her body felt new and strange and *strong*.
She caught her reflection in the mirror behind the bar.
It was her own face: freckles, auburn hair, her mom's chin, her dad's eyes. There was blood on her mouth and down her throat. And her eyes were burning red, rimmed with wolf-gold. Dark veins crawled out beneath them, then slowly sank back under her skin.
It was still her. It was her, and something new.
The thread under her ribs hummed, quiet and warm, pointing straight at the boy standing next to her.
"They're gonna try to kill me," Stiles said, sounding completely unbothered. He hopped back up to sit on the bar. "Like, *really* try. Your dad's gonna do the thing with the heart again, I can feel it. It's gonna be super gross."
"Yes."
"You gonna stop him?"
Hope thought about it.
She thought about Marcus. She thought about her own neck snapping, and the begging, and his calm brown eyes. She thought about the empty stadium, every light blazing, and the terrible, beautiful quiet.
"No," she said.
He laughed, delighted.
The door exploded off its hinges.
---