#AJSDKLSD

[lewkwoodnco]

Northern Attitude - Locklyle

A/N: ajsdklsd my first locklyle fic!! decided to post this one early (was planning to do this from 20 Dec - 31 Dec) in celebration of 35k signatures WOOO!! very excited heheh I feel this song is rlly very lucy coded so tw self esteem issues? but nothing suicidal. pure angst, ending is a little here and there? not exactly happy but not exactly sad, wc 2.1k!

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"Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not."

- The Secret History, Donna Tartt

The anxiety overwhelmed Lucy as soon as they stepped into the house on their latest case. She swayed dangerously, and her lips parted in surprise, but her grip on the doorframe was enough to steady her. Lockwood's head snapped back reflexively.

"Alright, Luce?"

Lucy nodded weakly, taking a deep breath in.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to linger."

He didn't look fully convinced.

With the days getting shorter and her mind wandering to less-than-favourable places over the past few days, she wasn't in the best emotional shape, even for a flimsy Type One. They walked in further, and the malaise grew stronger. Somewhere to her left, George fidgeted uncomfortably, but it was clear that neither of them had picked up the shift in the air like she had. Lucy closed her eyes. Happy thoughts.

She thought about her sisters, or what she could barely remember of the misshapen motley crew from her earliest days. She thought about the days before she Listened to ghosts, when she listened to the wavering hum of some distant dragonfly skimming over the tops of forbidden ponds. She thought about Norrie, and her team, and how excited they were on the night of their grade three certification. Lucy had been dizzy with glee and whatever was in the drink Norrie had given her, her hand drifting to the hilt of her rapier whenever the conversation ebbed. She couldn't stop smiling. For a moment she felt on top of the world, even if by only two inches. It was something she had earned, something hers to keep.

Then there was the Wythburn Mill incident. She jerked out a hand, trying to regain some grasp on the present as she traced the rough wall, trembling as her mind carried her onwards despite her efforts. That ominous premonition she had felt that day began to swell in her stomach, the feeling that had bred her knee-jerk reaction in the following weeks of considering any sort of malaise synonymous to the siren of death. Even now, if she wasn't too careful at times, she'd struggle to choke out the words to Lockwood and George when she would get too swept away in that unpleasant paralysis.

Her mother had been less than forgiving, which was nothing new. But what she hadn't expected was the cold dread and debilitating survivor's guilt that followed, as the bustling, rosy faces of what was left of her sisters had faded into obscurity. For three days, she had laid in her bed, silent as stone, and on the fourth day she had decided that she could bear this house no longer. She remembered cracking open her bedroom window one last time before leaving, breathing in the distinctly frigid, sterile Northern morning air. There was nothing, not even a single dragonfly, to pierce through the thick quiet.

As she walked away from her home without so much as a backwards glance, some part of her was painfully aware of how deeply ironic it was that she never felt quite as comfortable anywhere as she was whilst leaving. It was a realisation that weighed on her mind even after joining Lockwood & Co, the bogeyman that underpinned her rhythmic yet devoid-of-comfort routine. After every case, every agonised visitor launching themselves at them, she was left with an even stronger turbulence. What was she doing this all for? What happened next? And when would it all end?

The hollow vacuum following the questions was shattered by the spark of a flare that stung the side of Lucy's face. Her mind jumped back to the present, and she fumbled with her rapier for half a second. George lets out a strangled cry and half a minute later, they've bagged the source and the excitement's come to an end.

But on the way home, it felt like the Lurker hadn't truly been put to rest. Lucy ruminated on events she hadn't thought about in months. But one thing was clear: all the roads she's ever taken and all the roads she would take would lead her back to this exact spot - alone. Perhaps it was something implicit in her DNA: Lucy Carlyle did not seem to possess the genetic makeup for love.

It's these thoughts that she's too wrapped up in to pay more than a superficial level of attention to the others. She tosses and turns in bed until she gives up, deciding that a cup of tea was just what she needed.

As she walks down from the attic, there's a rustling in the shadows of the moonlit library. Faint glimmers on dull photographs materialise fleetingly as the figure erratically flips through plastic albums with a feverish intensity. The floorboard creaks as she shifts her weight, making his head snap up. She sees the vague outline of his rigid spine and crossed legs, poised to attack, as if they were still in that house. She steps out of the shadow of the door.

"Luce." He visibly relaxes, but there's still a troubled strain to his gaunt face. "Something wrong?"

"Couldn't sleep, is all."

Lockwood is already unfolding his legs to make room for Lucy as she walks in to sit next to him. He lamely tries to half-close the album, which awkwardly slips off his lap. His mildly pleasant expression does little to distract her from the aggrieved look in his eye. No matter how much he insisted otherwise, she could tell there were times when he felt no bigger or stronger than the small and vulnerable boy forced to grow up uncomfortably fast to fill shoes two sizes too big. They sit in silence for a while, and she argues with herself on how to reach out. She wants to hold his hand and tell him that everything would be alright. She wants him to believe her. She wants to take care of him in a way that matters.

"Do you ever wonder, about your family?"

But a want is a wish, some unrealised dream hovering at the edge of reality. The question catches her off guard, rendering her momentarily speechless. Her mind clouds over with a blurry sort of rage and that alienating grief she's carried with her all the way from Cheviot Hills. She stands up, and a part of Lockwood retreats into himself. There's an injured expression on his face.

"Go to bed, Lockwood." She wishes she knew how to convince him.

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In the morning Lockwood's restless and mopey and an utter pain to deal with. George barely manages to get through breakfast, after which he washes his hands of him and grumbles something about going to the Archives. The last time Lucy had seen him as disagreeable as this was when Holly had placed him on house arrest when she reached her limit with his hacking cough and runny nose. The blow might not have been so terrible, perhaps, if he hadn't had to watch the rest of them continue with their cases without them.

"A whole week, Luce," he had said, with watering eyes and a nose rubbed raw, when George and Holly were away on a case. Of the three of them, Lucy was surprisingly the most sympathetic to his plight, but only because she understood the agony of being cooped up. "What am I supposed to do for a week?"

"I don't know. Have a rest, maybe? Relax, read a book, like a normal person?"

He laughed bitterly, staring out the window with his back turned to her. It makes him look vaguely unfamiliar. "I'm happier out there than I could ever be in here."

An uncomfortable silence follows, littered with the muffled sounds of the sleepy traffic outside their windows. She knew he didn't mean it. She hoped he didn't mean it. He turned to stare at a picture frame on his nightstand defiantly.

"I don't want to waste the life I've left staying shut up inside when I could be out there, making it all...worth it. Worth something."

He hadn't clarified, and she hadn't needed him to. She sees him, six years old, far too young to be forging an enemy fused to his lifeblood for the next fifteen years. She sees the grief, the anger, the thirst for vengeance, for retribution over what was stolen from him. She sees the tarnished walls closing in on him and the way their history weighs on him. A memory of what he can't let go of but is already forgetting, if the tremble in his hands as he flipped through the photo album had been any indication.

But she pretends she doesn't see any of it, because that's easier than figuring out what to do with the rage that flickers inside her.

"You're being awfully dramatic over a...a week."

He had rolled his eyes, peeling away the hair plastered to his clammy forehead. "You'd be too if George kept trying to boil you alive with blankets."

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Now, a cold silence settles over 35 Portland Row. She finds him in the living room, and she thinks she's done a wonderful job at sneaking in until his rough voice startles her.

"I didn't mean to upset you last night." He seems astonishingly fragile and wholly disinterested, brooding at the window. It gives her a sickening feeling of deja vu. "I can really put my foot in it."

"S'alright."

He continues to stare lifelessly out the window, long enough to stir some urgency in Lucy. She isn't sure how to make it better, but knows she can make it worse. It holds her back.

"Well, if you ever wanted to...talk..."

She couldn't go any further. How could she, when she and the unfeeling Northern air were one and the same? But with Lockwood...she wanted to ache for him, cry for him. He speaks to the window pane aggressively.

"What?"

"George and I-"

He exhales derisively, and her quick temper rears its ugly head.

"It's not our fault you're an emotionally stunted twat-"

"Like you're any better."

"We're trying our best-"

"Then why won't you listen for longer than two seconds?"

Some mild reaction must have passed over her face, because the anger in Lockwood's face instantly softens. He sighs restlessly.

"I don't understand you, Luce. You can act so...brusque, and cold...but sometimes I look at you and...I don't believe it."

Her voice is a strained wisp of breath and she feels as small as she did when she was eight years old. She feels dangerously unbalanced, disfigured and grotesque.

"I'm...harsh. Unforgiving."

"Lucy, that's a lie and you know it."

"I'm only brave when it's easy. I'm a wreck when it gets tough."

"Infiltrating Winkman's operation was a far cry from easy."

"I'm so afraid, Lockwood. I'm terrified. All the time."

"Even with me?"

She doesn't know how to put into words how hard she tries to love him. She'll yell at him until she's blue in the face, but it is always with aching eyes that she looks at his sallow face and thinks I want him to be happy. With Lockwood, it was never about being loved; rather, she would succumb to the clawing desperation to love. If only she knew how.

"I'm afraid...I'm nothing you want."

He finally tears his eyes from the window, slowly turning to face her, and his expression is one of complete surprise. If she wasn't so close to tears she would have felt half-compelled to laugh.

"I don't know how to do it. Any of it. I want to know when you're okay and when you're not and I want to know what the hell I'm supposed to do when you shut yourself up but these are all things I've never known and...I don't have a bloody clue."

"Nothing...I...want?" he echoes. "Luce...you're incredible."

She picks up a cushion and aims for his head, which he smoothly catches, much to her irritation. He tosses it aside and slowly, carefully, wraps his knobbly arms around her. He holds her delicately, resting his cheekbone on her head, his breath tickling her fringe.

"Sometimes...I think I might be a little too in over my head thinking about everything I've lost. It makes me forget what I have now."

There's a thin strain in his voice towards the end of the sentence, and Lucy picks up on the emotion rattling in his chest. She wraps her own arms around him, caving in. He gives a shaky laugh.

"Maybe...maybe we possess some deficiency that make us entirely inept at caring for each other. Isn't that funny, Luce? Downright...hilarious?"

She closes her eyes and breathes in, humming noncommittally. For a moment there, she feels warm.

TAGLIST: @mitskiswift99 @dangelnleif @avdiobliss @elenianag080 @mischivana @houseoftwistedspirits

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