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Tonight's case had been an unmitigated disaster . They had prepared adequately; George had even had two full days to research the mansion they were hired to secure. They had been prepared. Everyone else was at the top of their game, except for him. He had lost his edge. His sight was still perfect, but the techniques he had used to suppress his fear no longer worked. He would see Lucy’s dead eyes staring back at him every time he set eyes on the visitor. He had been able to function on every case so far, but this one very nearly got them all ghost-touched.
He foolishly thought that life had thrown every possible pain his way after he had lost Jessica. He could never possibly be more messed up than he already was. Apparently, life had decided to call his bluff when Leopold Winkman had nearly killed the love of his life.
They had done two cases after the shooting so far. At each previous haunting, he’d been jumpier than usual, causing the spirits to be more aggressive. His usual theatrics allowed them to come out unscathed, but he could tell that his team was worried about him. He’d tried to go home and forget his fear as he curled up with Lucy in bed, but the anxiety stayed with him. His nightmares were more vicious than ever, relentlessly replaying all of his worst memories. Except now, he was pinned down & paralyzed as he watched his loved ones die. He couldn’t go to Lucy for comfort, not when she was still recovering. So he hid his pain like he always did, but the familiar mask didn’t fit right anymore. The cracks were beginning to show.
This new case had been the worst one so far. The evening before, his nightmares of Lucy dying had been particularly vivid, and the visitor was a teenage girl with short hair. He saw her face and froze, fully believing it was Lucy. He stood outside the iron chains, deaf to his friends' desperate shouts. In his panic-addled state, he felt the familiar pull to join the dead, to join his Lucy. The ghost’s outstretched hand had been mere centimeters from his face when George yanked him back and threw a salt bomb. George had been in the process of retrieving the source, a relic from World War one, but had to abandon it to save Lockwood. In the meantime, Kipps and Holly had been surrounded by phantasms and were fighting doggedly to prevent being ghost-touched. Several close calls, a few ruined clothing items, and a lightly smoking settee later, they had secured the house.
And it was no thanks to Lockwood. He had messed up, and he knew it. Holly and Kipps gave him a pitiful glance as they hailed their individual cabs. He preferred George’s ire to their sadness. It made him feel weak. He sat next to George in their cab, on their way to the furnaces. George didn’t speak until they were on their way back to Portland Row; he just kept cleaning his glasses agitatedly. He finally sighed, “We can’t keep doing this, Lockwood.”
He dropped his head into his hands, unable to say anything. What was he supposed to do? How was he supposed to pull himself together? He would think of a plan eventually. He was Anthony Bloody Lockwood, the owner and founder of the best psychical detective agency in London. He knew he could suppress his fears eventually, but he didn’t know if he could do that without retreating from Lucy. He wasn’t surprised when George didn’t get out of the cab when they pulled up to the house; he figured George would be going to stay with Flo tonight. He couldn’t blame him.
He trudged tiredly up the stairs. His one small solace was that Lucy would be waiting for him in his room. He didn’t know if he could even sleep without her near anymore. But once his eyes adjusted to the dark room, he realized the bed was empty. Panic consumed him as he switched on the light.
"Luce?" his heart began racing so hard it physically hurt. "Lucy?!" He called again, terrified. He could hardly hear over the sound of his own heartbeat. What if Winkman had somehow sent someone to kidnap her? What if she'd had a medical emergency and died on the way to the hospital, and no one had been able to notify him? "Lucy!" He shouted.
"I'm in here," he heard a muffled voice say. He calmed himself enough to get his bearings on where Lucy's strangled voice had emanated from. It had come from his left, where his wardrobe sat. He flung the doors open frantically, which he regretted immediately as it caused Lucy to flinch so hard she cried out in pain.
"I'm so sorry!" He whispered, horrified. He set his hand gently on her knee. She was cowering in his wardrobe, face blotchy from crying. Sweat plastered her bangs to her forehead. London was going through a heatwave, and the room was still sweltering, even at night. Inside the wardrobe, the humidity was even more stifling and at least 5 degrees hotter than the rest of the room. She must have been in there for a while.
She was trembling from head to toe. Her breathing was ragged, escaping in sobs as she clutched the spare rapier in her trembling right hand. At that moment, she looked... pitiful. Lucy Carlyle had never appeared pitiful before. Not covered in gravedirt, not after Aickmere's, not even when he'd found her struggling to smash the skull's jar in Marissa Fittes's office, and not after the cemetery attack. Never.
"Oh Luce," he said, slowly bringing his hand to brush the sweaty strands of hair away from her face. "What happened?"
"I-I think a car backfired. It just- It sounded just like…" She trailed off. "I felt like I couldn't breathe again. I couldn't think, I just needed to hide." She drew her knees tighter to her chest. “Came out of it a while ago, but I couldn’t make myself leave.”
He didn't say anything; he just drew his arms around her. His forehead rested against the side of her head as she calmed her breathing.
"I'm sorry," she sniffled.
"Don't say that to me. Not for something like this. You have nothing to apologize for, my love. Nothing." He pressed a gentle kiss into her hair. He held her until her shaking stopped.
"Can I take you over to the bed, sweetheart?" he asked gently. She nodded, so he tucked his arm under her knees and lifted her out of the wardrobe.
As he laid her on the bed, he was struck with the realization that she was much lighter than she'd been the last time he had carried her. He hadn't had to carry her anywhere for about a month. He'd noticed her picking at her food more, and her bones had become slightly more prominent, but he hadn't realized it was quite this bad. He knew she was feeling down, but he'd hoped that after she could move around more on her own, it would resolve itself. He’d been so focused on fixing himself and healing her physically that he forgot to account for how she was faring.
In the meantime, he'd been purchasing mountains of art supplies, dozens of books, and anything else he could think of to keep her occupied. He’d had their friends check on her regularly and made a point to spend a few hours a day with her, just the two of them. He made sure she wasn't stuck in the room all day, taking her to the back garden regularly when she couldn’t walk there on her own. He thought he'd been doing enough, but he realized that he’d been taking a surface-level interest.
They were both a mess. He needed help, but he didn’t know what actually dealing with his trauma would do to him. She needed help, but he was terrified of telling her that. Lucy had a stubborn streak like no other, and it was clear from that fateful interview that she hated appearing weak.
The first weeks home after the hospital had been tough for her. She had tried regularly to sit up on her own and crawl places by herself despite her serious abdominal wounds. He had discovered her multiple times on the bathroom floor, attempting to get on the toilet by herself. Those days were tough for them both. She felt humiliated, and he felt powerless to ease her pain. All he could do was silently offer his support while she refused to let anyone touch her and watched her as she cried into her pillow.
He moved around the room, opening windows, and turning on fans to cool off their bedroom. His thoughts were racing as he lay down next to her, trying to find the words he never had wanted to say, to fix the hurt so deep that it had altered her very being, to not have gone on that job, to have stopped all of this from happening. He settled on his side, gazing at her. He brought his hand up to play with her hair. When she had panic attacks, he never knew if she wanted physical contact or not, so he usually started with something light and non-intrusive.
She shuffled close to him, his sign that it was okay to wrap her in his embrace. As she nestled in his arms, he settled her head on his shoulder and gently brushed his hand up and down her bicep. He let his head rest on top of hers and peppered light kisses wherever he could reach. He was immediately transported back to the hospital, where he had held her just like this.
She spoke first. "You need to take the rapier away from me," she said hollowly. "I was so out of it when it first happened I was ready to attack anything that moved. I could have hurt you."
"No, you couldn't have. I'm still a much better fencer," he said in a weak attempt at a joke. She smacked him lightly on his chest, and he saw an equally weak smile grace her face for a second. Lockwood gently cradled her face with his hand and pressed a long, affectionate kiss on her temple. He hesitated for a moment before he whispered, "I will. I promise."
They laid there in silence, too afraid to broach the subject they were both clearly on their minds. She had lost control. She was worried about being a danger to himself and their friends, and this time he agreed with her.
"I think I need help," she whispered, her voice breaking while staring desolately at the ceiling. A tear rolled down her cheek from her unblinking eyes.
"I know."
She began moving on to her side to face him, and he automatically grabbed her hip to help pull her the rest of the way. She still had trouble with it sometimes. She nestled her head under his chin and curled into him. He held her as tight as he dared. He couldn't seem to stop treating her like she was made of spun glass, no matter how much it hurt both of them. He knew he had been treating her differently, but he couldn’t hold back the fear that consumed him.
They let themselves cry through the changing light until the light through the window turned pale yellow. It was sunrise.
"We'll start looking first thing, ok? We’ll find someone who can help Luce, I promise," he murmured into her hair.
"What if I'm not the same afterward? What if I never fully recover?" She swallowed painfully.
He held her a little tighter, and pressed a kiss on her forehead. It was then that he cemented his reasoning to focus on what really mattered. In his determination to keep Lockwood & Co up and running, he had let himself and Lucy fall to the wayside. In his arrogance, he believed that he could heal Lucy and run the agency. All he had succeeded in was running both into the ground.
Lucy took a long shuddering breath before she whispered brokenly, "What if I can never be the woman you fell in love with again?"
He could have searched for the right words to calm her fears, he could have scoffed at the impossibility of her suggestion, but instead, he pulled her into a searing kiss. It was desperate and frantic. He allowed himself to lose control and crushed her body into his. She gasped against his mouth, and their tongues met in a frenzied dance. One hand tangled in her hair, and the other grasped her hip. Her arms wrapped around his neck, allowing no space to come between them.
He missed this. He missed her . He moved his lips to her neck and bit down lightly on the tender skin of her throat, causing a moan to drop from her lips. He licked over the mark he’d left and peppered messy kisses down to her collarbone. He missed the passion, the sleepless nights, and the comfort after a nightmare. He longed for those moments when they laughed so loudly at three am that George banged on the door to tell them to shut up. How long had it been that he had let himself wind her up into laughter that left them both gasping for breath?
Her hands moved from his neck to wander down his chest and around his back. With a groan, he rolled until he was hovering over her, lightly pressing his body against hers. Her fingernails dragged down his spine, causing him to shiver. Sparks were dancing under his skin where she touched him, so he returned the favor by sliding his hand up her top. He ran his fingers over her healed incision scar, causing her to whimper. He dragged his lips up her jaw, letting them trail against her soft skin. She panted next to his ear, biting his earlobe and dragging it through her teeth. Their lips met again, and he poured everything into this kiss. How sorry he was that he had let them drift apart, for treating her differently, for willfully ignoring how much pain she was in. How much he loved her.
They broke briefly for air. Her rapid little breaths fanned across his face before he surged forward to capture her lips again. He had treated her too delicately, and it made her believe she was weak. He hadn’t realized until now that it made her think that she alone had become an entirely different person. In reality, they had both changed. The shooting had permanently altered both of them, but he had tried to carry on as if the old Lucy would magically return, completely healed. But that didn’t mean he didn’t love this Lucy. He loved her deeply, but this Lockwood had lost her twice . In his fear, he had unconsciously retreated from her, just as he had done after the Wintergarden case.
He broke the kiss with a gasp, his gaze locking with Lucy's. “I love you,” he whispered, lips meeting hers once more. “I never stopped loving you.” Another tender kiss followed. “And I will never stop loving you.” He paused to capture her lips again. “Do you know why? Because I chose you, Lucy Carlyle, and I will keep choosing you. Forever.”
He shifted them back onto their sides and settled her in his arms. "You need help. So do I. I let myself run away from you because I was scared of losing you. I let my fear hurt you." She looked at him in shock, tears glistening in her eyes. Gently, he dragged his fingers across her cheek, cupping her face with his hand. "I made that mistake once, and I thought I would never make it again, but here we are. So let's do this right. We'll- we'll go see counselors. We'll talk about what we are going through.”
"Really? You'll do this with me?" She asked, the surprise in her voice nearly killing him.
"You said you would follow me. Now it's my turn." He dipped his head to press a kiss onto her necklace. "I love you, Lucy."
"I love you too, Anthony." She whispered, her tears finally falling.
He tenderly wiped the tears away with his thumb. "Let's do this. Together."
She leaned forward, pressing a kiss to his lips. She brought her hand up to run her fingers through his hair. His heart was still racing from their earlier kiss, but each touch from her still had the power to send it back into a frenzy. "Together."
“If I’m being honest, I think I need it just as much as you do." He said as he hid his head in her neck, unable to meet her eyes. He would be a filthy hypocrite if he didn’t admit that Lucy being shot had affected him as well. The case tonight was proof of that. Apart from becoming overprotective and emotionally distant, he now experienced a constant unease. His rapier, once an extension of himself that he proudly wielded, now felt like a necessary tool for protection. He couldn't deal with this on his own anymore.
Mercifully, she didn’t say anything. She pulled his face up so she could rest her forehead against his. It was her way of telling him she knew, and she still loved him.
They laid there wrapped in each other’s embrace until the light of day chased away the ghosts in the night. With the hopeful start of a new day, he was met with the realization that his love for her made his life worth living, but that didn't make it easy. Learning to grow and evolve together reminded him of two trees gradually entwining their roots and weaving into one another until it was one entity. It was a process that was long, arduous, and at times, excruciating. Yet, the end result was a marvel.
Seemingly in-sync with his thoughts, Lucy broke the silence, her fingers tracing gentle patterns on his chest. "Love is harder than I thought it would be," she said, her voice soft and vulnerable. "I think you have to be very brave to open your heart to someone else."
He reached for her hand, intertwining their fingers, and met her gaze with unwavering affection. "Then I'm very lucky indeed that you are the bravest person I've ever met, Lucy Carlyle."