A Tale To Be Told

Zero: Before the Beginning

CHAPTER 0: The Prologue

Edited

A memory of his smile, bright and impish, burned into her mind. A father with love in his eyes, a love as innocent and beautiful as a sunrise. That love is now only visible in the memories that live in their minds, and those that were brought to life by the art of paint brushing against the canvas.

Sat beside the smile is the burning memory of a mother's laugh, one that brought smiles to the faces of men and women who had lived through the cruellest of events, of people who had seen and met the worst of humanity and of those who had committed atrocities that become the stories told to scare children but could have scared the bravest of the Achillean army as they stood outside the walls of Troy. Her laugh alone could elicit smiles from them. That sound, her mothers laugh, echoing through her mind, haunting her day and night, like a loyal man standing beside his brother through hell and back.

Brown and warm eyes that held a burning darkness, shone upon hearing his lovers laugh, eyes that held a million stories she will never get the chance to hear, an opportunity lost, the only story she will ever remember from him, was not the stories told but the haunting held in his warm eyes. Eyes that only ever softened around the promise Always and Forever.

She blamed the owner of those brown eyes for taking her laugh, for killing her mother. She told herself, yelled into the abyss of her mind that it was his fault but her heart knew the truth, she blamed none but herself, her selfishness.

She spent years begging, praying and crying to see that smile again, to have a life with her family, to bring back the promise of always and forever. A consequence of trying to meddle with fate was the beginning of a new fate she now has to live as the sister, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos spun her a new fate. An orphan. Elijah and his warm eyes may have shone as Hayley laughed while they danced in the beauty of peace but she'll never know without dying, yet that's something she could never do.

Die.

A death where peace is allowed is an impossibility for Hope Mikaelson. She's the only tribrid to have ever existed, the limitations to her powers are nothing but an unknown entity, only fate will ever know who'll she become and what she can do, yet will they ever spin her a happy ending? She knew if she was to ever die, it would be nothing but a momentary event that will only ever happen once as soon as she wakes, she'll live until always isn't forever.

However, Hope couldn't live everyday in New Orleans walking through memories of impish smiles, infectious laughs and warm brown eyes. So she tried to find a semblance of normal. She went back to school.

The Salvatore boarding school for the young and gifted.

Before the events that ended in her becoming an orphan and losing the uncle that she never truly got to know, no one knew she was a Mikaelson for they all knew her as was Hope Marshall the daughter of the great Hayley Marshall, also known as Andrea Labonair. The werewolf Queen, the queen that brought the fighting factions of the New Orleans supernaturals to a new and equal peace.

But when she went back, it wasn't with the name of her mother, no, when she walked through the doors of the Salvatore School, she was known as Hope Mikelson, the daughter of 'The Great Evil' Niklaus Mikaelson.

She hated that she could never defend him and that no one was ever willing to think that maybe he wasn't the man portrayed in the stories. After all, the heroes and villains are portrayed by the writers of the stories. He was like the Iliad, a story of Troy written by the Greek bard Homer. There stood Hector who brought the killing blow to Patroclus. No one will ever know if what Homer wrote was true or not but we do know that he would have never had Troy win in the end, for he was Greek and he would see the victory of his people. It all depends on how far you read if you're into it. Only the historians questioned and analysed the Iliad but no one ever questioned the history books about the Mikaelsons. If one story was true, surely the rest were as well.

No one questioned, no one except the Saltzman twins.

Josie and Lizzie met Klaus, a man trying to save his daughter, not the monster told in the books. The books written by their father, no they judged him for his actions and the soft words told by their mother, the stories about a man who was damaged but still drew sketches of horses and saved their mother with beautiful dresses worn by princesses. Of a man who let her have her first love despite the anger, her lover brought him.

Josette always had a kind heart and saw the good that people had the ability to possess but also co-dependent and pure but hiding the pain with a smile that sings innocents. Elizabeth tried and fought to see what her twin saw, tried to have her heart and unrelenting kindness but she thought herself broken, she's been trying to heal, to gather the broken pieces and try and put them back together. However, she thought not even all the king's men could help put her back together.

Hope and Lizzie haven't always gotten along. Still don't, not really. But the sisters have spun a fate that will cause a smile to grace their lips at a friendship that will grow, like a flowered vine up a wall.

But the same could not be said for Hope and Josie. Josie was never hostile to Hope, not really, all she was doing was creating a facade to hide a secret she didn't want to have. A lie to hide a crush from her sister who always won. Josie's feelings for Hope never truly left but she got a crush. Her first love...Or was it her second?

Penelope Park. She was Josie's first kiss, first everything. But Penelope saw that Josie didn't stand up, and didn't use her voice. She saw the problem as Lizzie and so she verbally fought the blond twin. She fought to cause pain, to cause her to lash out, to cause Josie to stand up and protect herself.

However, she only saw what Lizzie wanted everyone to see.

The consequence of the verbal attacks towards Lizzie was Josie's pain. The pain caused was the end of Penelope and Josie's relationship.

Penelope Park still fought, still loved the honey eyed siphon but the same would not be said of Josie. For it was never to be.

There's always been something, some spark, something almost unexplainable about the connection that Hope and Josie felt. It was like being underwater, drowning everyday, until blue met brown, when near one another, physically or just a thought about the other, it was like they could breathe a little easier. It was like flying too close to the sun but when together, somehow they just knew they wouldn't have gotten burned but instead fly higher and come back down without even a bead of sweat rolling down their faces.

This is a story about a promise made and the trials to keep it without letting the world around them burn them. A promise to Hayley that Hope intended to keep, "have at least one totally epic love."