Lifetime Piling Up

You Can't Always Get What You Want

"I can't wait until the baby gets here. We'll be a family of four soon, it's exciting."

Hope looks up from her very much now alive parents, who both have her trapped in a bear hug.

Josie said that, and now she is staring at her with unreserved adoration and devotion. Hope's not sure what she did to deserve it.

The burn in her lungs becomes a little more apparent, a little more dire, it has Hope clenching her hands into fists and lets the dig of her nails into her palms ground her.

Nobody seems to notice her slowly backing away and hyperventilating from the shock of it all.

No one but Klaus. His eyes stay trained on her the whole time, even as the conversation of the arrival of the new baby carries on.

"Luv, are you sure you're alright?" he asks once the two are away from Hayley and Josie, who are still cooing at baby Andrea Jr.'s sonogram.

"I-I don't know," Hope wheezes.

Klaus squints at his daughter for a moment, something calculating in his eyes gone as fast as it appeared.

"Already having that old panic, huh?" He nods knowingly after a few minutes and nudges Hope with an elbow. "This is your second child, Hope. You would think you would be more confident."

A tiny little whine was wheezed out of Hope.

She could feel the panic creeping back in. Not the one her father was referring to. This one was less about a new baby on the way and more about being trapped in an alternative universe.

Hope had been in a lot of tight spots before— trapped in Malivore, trapped in Josie's fairy tale head dive, a Star Wars weed-induced fantasy.

But this one got to take the cake.

"Now, now sweetheart, it's normal to feel this way—" Klaus began, trying to comfort his daughter, but Hope didn't want to hear.

"I need some space to think." She mumbles walking past her not dead father and returning to the room this nightmare had started in.

Hope stops short in front of the tall, full-length mirror and looks at herself. She only half-recognizes the woman staring back at her. She seems older than seventeen, most likely in her late twenties, as her features are more mature, like her cheekbones, jawline, and collarbone— the transient parts, only skin deep.

Inside, though, Hope appears to still be her martyr self with the weight of the world on her shoulders.

She bared her teeth, waiting for the tell-tale signs of any protruding fangs, but found none.

She wasn't a tribrid.

Hope was human here.

Fuck this is overwhelming.

She sits on the edge of the queen-size bed and puts her head in her hands. Her breath comes out, whining out through her voicebox like a panicked animal.

Hope wants to cry but doesn't have the energy for it.

It's unbelievable.

Her parents are alive, and she's married to Josie. She has a son and, apparently, another child on the way.

This has got to be a dream, or the afterlife, or more likely a fucking Chambre de Chasse. Anything to explain what is happening because Hope doesn't know what's real and what isn't anymore.

And why is Josie here? How ironic the Gemini witch left weeks ago to escape the craziness of their fucked up supernatural lives only to end up part of her hallucinations.