Legacies Imagines

Let it all go- Jasie

On the second day after it all, after Hope has brought her back or, at least, assembled the shattered pieces of her somehow, when she feels the guilt crashing down on her like an oppressive heat, when she feels the rage like a wave rushing towards her that will one day tear her asunder, when she's ready to run and hide, or maybe burn the school down again, Jade finds her in the library and holds out her hand.

"Come with me," she says, simply, a twinkle in her eye and a smile on her lips that Josie wants to fall into again and again.

"Where?" Josie questions, and Jade shakes her head.

"Don't ask questions, just follow me," she adds, and her smile is gentle, concerned neither for Josie nor for herself.

That makes for a nice change. She isn't afraid of her, isn't skirting around the edges of her vision like she hadn't just held the school hostage, forcing them to watch a fight between her and Hope Mikaelson, everyone's hero.

She seems to understand, like those years with her humanity turned off had made her best equipped to actually get how Josie feels like her mind and soul have been shattered, stitched back together with spare parts, not quite whole.

Josie follows her to the Old Mill and they pause, before Jade climbs a rickety ladder, calling down to her.

"I know you probably have way more hiding spots around here than I do," Jade says, "but you looked like you could use some space."

They sit next to each other and watch the sunset, silently, for almost an hour. Jade doesn't ask questions and Josie doesn't offer anything. She can't, won't bring herself to talk about it, but Jade seems content to sit in silence. Josie has no idea how to thank her for this, this peace, this quiet, this escape.

Josie turns to watch Jade a few times (she can't help it), her eyes changing color in the glow and this really is the golden hour, rays of sunshine around them. Her hair catches the shine of the fading light, like spun gold, and she smells like citrus and gardenia. A smile dances on her lips when she catches Josie watching and the siphon looks down at her hands, a blush creeping along her cheeks.

Josie's lungs move easier with Jade's quiet presence next to her, undemanding, understanding.

They kissed two times before Josie wreaked havoc on the school, and as Jade holds out a hand to help her down the ladder, Josie thinks that she'd like to kiss her again.

The dark and light, two parts of her that she carries inside, seem constantly at war, caught in one body and fighting for the upper hand, tossed together and slowly working towards some semblance of understanding.

There is one thing that the two sides can both agree on, however:

They like Jade.

Jade isn't scared of the darkness. She doesn't flinch when Josie's eyes flash black, doesn't shiver when her lips whisper spells she's too young to master.

She understands.

She's different from everyone else because, in one way or another, they're all different around her now. There are the students, of course, intimidated, pale as ghosts, scampering away as soon as she walks down a hallway.

There's her father.

He can't meet her eyes anymore.

She supposes she's too much of a painful reminder now, in all the ways she reminds him of her mother, the woman he loved, the woman he lost, and in all the ways she reminds him of her killer.

Josie is much like Josette, except she is stronger, except she is the survivor.

She thinks he might hate her, a little, now.

Just for that.

Hope is scared, too. It's different, of course. She's not intimidated by the things Josie could do, still powerful beyond belief. She's worried about what Josie might say.

Hope has brought Landon and Raf back, brought Josie back, and she's the hero of the day, and running away from the one truth she couldn't hide from, inside Josie's mind.

Lizzie.

Quiet, and dark, sarcastic and broken, dark Josie had whispered the truth they've all been running away from for years. "I'm not the twin you want, Hope."

And now Hope avoids her, wearing a facade of happiness with Landon as she grips his hand in the hallways, but her eyes are lost and she seems to be looking for someone else in the crowds.

She thinks that Hope misses the old her - quiet and helpless.

Not in the way everyone else does, for their own selfish reasons, but because Hope is so, so terrified of losing the people she loves that she needs them to be weak, just a little bit, so that she can be sure that she is strong enough to protect them.

Josie thinks she has spent enough time being a damsel in distress.

Lizzie isn't scared, but Josie is scared of her. All their truths are out in the open now, and the twin bond feels like a tightening chokehold around her neck, eternal now.

She breathes and it feels like barbed wire around her heart, digging into it. She exhales and it feels like falling without a rope to catch her. She knows Lizzie feels the same, but they can't talk about it. She can't talk about it. Not yet.

Their destiny was set in stone, and with her iron will, Hope Mikaelson has shifted it, and nothing will ever be the same again.

And Josie is grateful, she is, she is.

She never wanted to lose her sister.

She never wanted to win and carry the parts of someone else's soul around in her mind.

She never wanted to kill her sister.

"But it was your destiny," the dangerous, dangerous voice inside of her whispers, "and they stole it."

Under her touch, the desk begins shaking, until there are pale, long fingers, soft to the touch, atop her own hand.

"It's going to be okay, Josie," Jade says, quiet enough not to disrupt class, and Josie leans into her, intertwining her fingers in Jade's and breathing slowly through her nose, the way Lizzie had always tried when she was on the verge of losing herself.

She meets Jade at the Old Mill nightly now, and they talk about their days, but more often than not, they don't.

Two weeks after it all, Josie stops Jade before following her up the ladder, spinning the blonde around and lunging forward, hands on either side of Jade's waist.

And it's clumsy and imperfect and so not the way that Josie had pictured it (because she had pictured it far too many times) but Jade laughs into the kiss, pressing herself fully into Josie, chasing her lips when Josie goes to pull away.

Josie exhales, momentarily weightless, her guilt a distant memory in the back of her mind, forehead resting against Jade's before she opens her eyes and is met with a smile.

"You have no idea how long I've been waiting for you to do that," the vampire sighs, chest heaving despite herself, biting her lower lip.

Jade meets her eyes, not afraid of what she may see in them, and she doesn't flinch, doesn't shy away from Josie, whose heart beats black and white, who fights her demons every single day, who drowns in guilt each night, just pulls her up the ladder to the roof of the Old Mill where they sit in silence and watch the sunset once more.

Because Jade had been lost in the darkness and now she is bathed in light, and Josie wants to fight, for herself, for her father, for Hope, and for Lizzie. And for Jade, who grabs her hands and pulls Josie closer to her, a kiss to her temple as the final rays of the sun vanish.