Legacies Imagines

Good people (bad times)- Posie

She's getting really fucking tired of crying.

After being buried alive by her biological mother, she cried. When she had to siphon the life out of her, she cried. At one point, it felt like crying was all she was capable of doing well without failure. She had grown so familiar with the feeling of damp cheeks and the bitter taste of salt on her lips, that if she closed her eyes, she could almost pretend to hear the ocean spray and feel the warm sun on her face. But when she opened them, she was only ever faced with the brutal truth of reality.

In her naivety, and after being repeatedly beaten down and broken by everything life threw at her, she promised never to let anything have the power to make her cry again.

Frankly, she was really just getting tired of being let down time and time again while simultaneously expecting people to be good. She had been too trusting in all her endeavors and she knows that, but out of their world of witches and werewolves and vampires, you'd think there would be a little room in there for good people-she was wrong.

Something in the way Penelope looked at her when she had fallen-thrown herself-down the stairs echoed in Josie's mind to the point where the echo morphed into screaming.

Open the letter, please. Please.

Though the siphon would never openly admit what took her so long, she could see the haunting urgency of finality in the deep green eyes of the girl who constantly implored her to read it.

Why why why didn't she just read it?

From the moment Josie received the letter, she knew she should've put her pride aside and read it right then and there on the steps. But she also knew that holding a steely front in the face of the girl who broke your heart was more important than anything-because god knows how tragic it would be if the one you loved saw you hurting, saw that you cared.

On even the busiest of school nights, the weight of the letter would draw her head towards her desk, even on the nights where the world seemed to be falling apart at the seams. There was something about it that demanded her attention, like two magnets opposite sides of a wall; destined to meet, but under impossible circumstances.

She assumed that having something so personal from Penelope for the first time in a while would affect her like this. Would make her weak. But, when she finally, finally read Penelope's letter, fully intending to read nothing more than a half-baked apology weaved between words of venom and resentment, she was forced to remember what a good person was.

It had been so long since Josie had seen or heard the real Penelope, that she had forgotten how much the witch cared for her. She read the letter over and over again until she knew it by heart, each time a new wave of shame washing over her for immediately assuming the worst of her ex-girlfriend. For assuming what everyone else
thought of her, what Josie knew she wasn't.

She should have cried. For once, it felt like the only appropriate response. But she couldn't bring herself to do so. A flicker of the promise she had vowed to herself flashed in her mind, and she willed her tears to remain at bay.

Instead, she focused on the letter in her hands that was practically shining with the words of reverence that Penelope had showered her with. Beautifully woven words that seemed to be intricately picked with the grace of only Penelope Park's writing. With every word her dampening eyes took in, her heavy and cold heart lifted,
swept along a blissful journey by eventual promises and sorrowful goodbyes.

In. Out. In. Out.

She had finally run out of tears.

Walking down to where the Miss Mystic Falls competition was still carrying on, her sights zeroed in on her sister.