CONSEQUENCES [ 3 ] | THE ORIGINALS & LEGACIES

S E V E N T E E N

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"Don't you have some things to do at the Salvatore School?" Hope asked Lilah.

Hope hadn't expected the vampire to keep walking with her, all the way back into town. It felt nostalgic for Hope, memories of when they'd be walking up and down those streets together going to get milkshakes at the Grill. 

"I have questions for you, I guess," Lilah shrugged, before sighing. "I'm a royal bitch," she muttered.

"Why?" Hope asked with a laugh.

"There's this girl, Lizzie, I guess you know her, too," Lilah started to explain. "She, uh, I guess she has photos of me, a lot of the students there do. But they don't remember me, and I don't remember them, and Lizzie has been trying to get to know me since I got here, and I've just kept pushing the little blonde bitch away."

Hope giggled, able to see the irony in the situation.

"Were me and her really good friends?" Lilah asked.

Hope looked at her sadly and nodded.

"She always liked you better than she liked me," Hope explained. 

Hope decided to take Lilah to the Grill, pausing in front of the restaurant that held so much memories for the two of them together, and even for their fathers, who both spent some time there during their escapades in Mystic Falls.

"We used to go here a lot," Hope told her as they found a seat. "You really like their—"

"Coffee milkshakes with brownies, white cream on the bottom," Lilah had heard a voice saying, a flashback to some old memory, but she said it out loud, too. When she looked up, Hope's face had paled. She glanced down to the menu in front of her, pointing at the drink on the menu as a cover up. "It's on the menu."

She held the paper up, and Hope nodded, a wave of relief and disappointed rushing over her.

But it didn't really matter whether it hurt Hope to know that Lilah didn't remember her. She saw Lilah there with Roman, smiling during the game. She looked like she was glowing, she looked happy. That's all Hope ever wanted for her, for her to be happy. Then with what Alaric told her, about how everyone forgot her, too, meaning Lilah had been living some other life, she just couldn't bring herself to tell her the truth. She was scared that if she uprooted Lilah's fake reality, the two of them would grow distant the way they had before Hope left in the first place.

Plus, when she channeled her, she saw all those memories of her new life in New Orleans, surrounded by their families, only worried about who between herself and Josh was going to open Rousseau's in the morning. Her cousin was off being an adult, for real this time.

"So, you uh, you said you had questions?" Hope asked.

"Yeah, um... since you were being mentored by Hayley, you'd know Elijah Mikaelson, right?" Lilah asked her, watching as she nodded. "Did he, uh, did he know I was his daughter before he died?"

Hope remembered how broken Lilah was when Elijah decided to die with Klaus, how he decided not to be her dad. It was knowing that he consciously knew he had a daughter and still chose to follow Klaus to the end of the line that truly bent the positive personality Lilah always tried to keep. It was the necromancer telling her that Elijah wasn't fit to be a dad that made her want to turn off her humanity.

"No," Hope shook her head. "He, uh... he always treated you like a daughter, but you didn't admit he was your dad until he was already gone."

Hope watched sorrow wave over Lilah's face: a loot of regret. She was unsure if that was the right answer to give her, but at least it wouldn't have been soul crushing like the truth was.