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Lucy's mum took her to a ballet, once. It was a local production, low-budget and half the dancers weren't exactly professionals, but the tickets had been free. So, her mother had corralled all seven daughters into their nicest dresses—church clothes, left over from when their father was still around—and they'd all gone down to the theatre.
The pamphlet that had been handed out had Giselle spelled out in the sweeping, curly handwriting Lucy always loved but could never quite reproduce.
Lucy loved the dance, enamoured with the graceful steps and beautiful costumes, but she never quite got the story, too young to understand it all- Why Albrecht would lie to Giselle in the first place, why Hilarion would believe his exposure would win him Giselle's love so immediately, why Giselle went mad from the betrayal, why she protected him, in the end.
And then she meets Anthony Lockwood.
He's a prick, absolutely. He's arrogant and prideful and doesn't think before he speaks to her—and she learns, not quickly, but not too slowly either, that the reason he doesn't is because he likes her, the same way he insults George in that oddly affectionate way without paring his words down to silver-tipped barbs—but Lucy sees more in him. He's kind, and oddly sensitive, and has the intelligence and skill to back his attitude up.
He's also a liar.
Not in the way you'd think, he never lies to her face, never tells her one thing when the truth is entirely different, but he hides things. He traps them behind the thin, plaster veneer of the Anthony Lockwood he believes people expect. He sneers and snaps and digs his teeth in and never lets anyone gain an inch of ground with him because if they did, they'd see the truth.
Lucy hates it. She also loves him. It's quite annoying, actually.
She often thinks her life might be quite a bit easier if she'd fallen in love with just George, instead. (It's not like she doesn't think George is just as chaotic or just as insane as them, but adding Lockwood to that equation inherently drives the entire thing off a cliff.)
But she hasn't, and now Anthony Lockwood, the bloody bastard, is trying to trade his life for hers. Again.
She's trapped against some man that smells like cheap alcohol and dust and sewage, a knife pressed roughly against her throat, and she watches as Lockwood cycles through exactly two stages of grief—denial and anger—before landing on bargaining.
The guy's a relic hunter, some low-level scum of Winkman's they'd found while trying to get some information on a source who thinks that killing the teenagers his boss hates will get him some credit. It probably would, actually, now that Lucy thinks about it, slightly hysterically.
"Look, she's not going to do anything, just take me instead," Lockwood is insisting, hands held high in an attempt to defuse and disarm this drunken asshole. "I'm the one Winkman hates anyway, right?"
This seems to give the man pause, and Lucy takes his moment of hesitation—probably a product of the alcohol addling his brain, lucky them—to slip her forearms in between his knife arm and her throat, forcing the limb outward so hard that the knife scatters, and twisting to slam his head into the wall beside them as hard as she can.
Lockwood scrambles towards her as the man crumples to the ground, but before he can wrap her in his arms, because he always does when she's been in danger and it usually disarms her anger immediately, she glares at him furiously.
"Watch him," she hisses, storming inside the bar he'd come stumbling out of, having seen them arguing outside, and snatching the phone impatiently from the bartender's hand.
She calls Inspector Barnes. He, unlike Lockwood, is entirely predictable and incredibly reasonable, so when he hears that she'd been physically attacked by a relic hunter while they were literally just talking on the street, he swears a bit and promises to haul ass out to where they are and arrest the guy himself.
Sure, Lucy hates him a bit for the stunt he pulled with Blake, but it's not like she doesn't understand it, and really, she knows he's just trying to protect a few kids with no parental supervision, two of whom have pretty obvious death wishes.
She also doesn't want to have to deal with the regular police, and the man's appearance will absolutely piss Lockwood off. It's a win-win-win, in her book.
Lucy thanks the bartender, apologises for her rudeness, and slips back outside to Lockwood and the hunter. She crosses her arms, staring down her employer-friend-crush, and frowns.
Sometimes that's enough. Lockwood had taken his promise of no secrets quite seriously, and he'd really tried to stop hiding things from them. But sometimes, in times like this, he shuts down, covers his raw centre with shitty attitude and hubris and pretends like Lucy and George can't see right through him anyway.
His face twitches, but he just mirrors her stance, pulling up a lazy, cocky façade. Lucy's frown turns deeper, and she just says, "Barnes is on his way. We'll talk about this when we get home."
And Barnes does come, which honestly still surprises Lucy, the fact that he doesn't just send someone who works for him out, doesn't leave them without a familiar face or support if he can help it. It was annoying, when DEPRAC was hindering their ability to work, but they've come to a tentative truce where Lockwood & co accept that Barnes wants to protect them, and Barnes accepts that they're adamant on keeping their independence. Now, it's a comfort, because Lucy really does not want to deal with this whole situation on top of what it's going to take to get Lockwood sorted out, and she knows Barnes will handle it properly.
She doesn't trust adults, not with her mother and Jacobs' ghosts hanging at her back, but she gets pretty close, with the Inspector.
Lockwood looks pissed, but he won't break the truce they have with the man who fined him £60,000, so he keeps his mouth firmly shut as Lucy tells the story. It's not...the whole truth, she leaves out the part where Lockwood was blatantly trying to get himself killed for her again, but it's enough of the story that Barnes arrests the guy on the spot.
It's not like the Inspector won't guess what she's leaving out, but she's not so mad at Lockwood that she'd put him on the spot like that.
She says her polite goodbyes and elbows Lockwood until he does the same, and then takes off walking in the direction of Portland Row as soon as Barnes' car has turned the corner back to DEPRAC. They had intended to stop by a nearby café before visiting the house they were investigating, but they hadn't got far.
He follows her, trailing quietly at her elbow, and even tries to talk a couple of times. She silences him with a glare at each attempt. It's nearly curfew, and Lucy doesn't intend to be caught by a ghost or, god forbid, people while she absolutely loses it at him.
She storms in, slides her rapier into their umbrella stand, and whisks herself up the stairs to drop her jacket and bag in her room. She tosses a boot at George's door as she passes back downstairs and gives him a significant look when the boy pokes his head out. It gets an eye roll, but he's wearing trousers when he follows Lucy into the kitchen, which is a win in her book.
George puts the kettle on, because George's instinct is to cook when hard conversations occur, and Lucy braces herself on the table, trying to sort herself out. Lockwood's retreated, presumably to the library, and she's grateful for the chance to think.
"What is it this time?" George asks. He sounds tired, and she feels bad, really, because he'd probably been sleeping after three long days in the Archives.
"He tried to trade himself for me again. One of Winkman's guys caught us on the way to the house."
George's eyes flicker to the thin slice on her throat, surrounded by a red mark which would probably become a bruise from where he'd grabbed her in the initial fight. She doesn't need to explain any more, but she continues anyway.
"He's lucky the guy was too drunk to get what he was saying right away. I managed to get the knife out of his hand and knock him out."
George pours out the water into three mugs, and passes her a biscuit. He tucks her against his side, a rare occurrence, because George doesn't really do casual touching, and it's something she knows he does specifically for her. It's nice, and she settles her head against his shoulder, watching the tea leaves bleed out into the water.
"We'll sort him out," he says quietly.
Lucy sighs, reluctantly moving away from George’s warmth—it’s January in London, and George is the only one in Portland Row who puts out heat even in the cold, Lucy’s sure Lockwood has a circulation issue, with how cold his skin is, and Lucy gets sick pretty often, a remnant of channeling Annabel—to put together her and Lockwood’s tea.
She’s not picky, has never been allowed to be, really, so she just drops some sugar in and calls it a day, but Lockwood is particular, will only drink it with just a bit of milk and some honey. George calls him a snob, but Lockwood just smiles and says he’s detail-oriented, and really George, you should be glad I am.
George always snipes back with I’m the detail oriented one, dumbass- You just happen to be a neurotic prick.
And Lockwood laughs at him, each time, as George puts in milk and sugar in indiscriminate amounts, and wrinkles his nose at Lucy’s over-brewed under-sweetened mess.
(She likes the way Lockwood makes his, but he doesn't need the ego boost, so she’ll never admit it. Not to his face. He knows, though, makes it the same way for her when she’s ill.)
George passes her another biscuit. He’s usually the biggest proprietor of the biscuit rule, but Lucy’s sure he's reading the tense lines of her muscles and the clenched jaw her dentist said is bad for her. She snaps it in between her teeth, trying to breathe through the tight anxiety in her chest.
“I can’t keep watching him do this, George. I don't know how you did it before me.”
George shrugs, munching on his own biscuit. “I didn't. I told you when you first got here that you have to call him out on it, but I never really did much more than that. I didn't know how bad it was.”
Lucy sighs. She knows this, of course, George has told it to her in soft tones over meals where Lockwood is confined to bed-rest and can't be with them, and Lucy is too mad at him to sit in his room. It doesn't make it easier.
“It’s not-“ George falters, and that’s enough to get Lucy’s eyes to catch on his face, taking in the strain and worry. “It isn't your responsibility, Lucy. We love him, he's our friend, but…if he decides to get himself killed, not only are you not going to be able to change his mind, the stubborn bastard, but it's not your responsibility to save him.”
She opens her mouth, but George just keeps going.
“Of course you can choose to try, but you aren't obligated, Lucy. And it wouldn't be your fault if you didn't. He has to want that change, and if he doesn't, you can't make him.”
Lucy falters, stutters in the movement of stirring the honey into Lockwood’s cup.
She thinks back to Giselle, to how her love had protected Albrecht, how she chose, even in her despair and anger, to keep the wilis away until she and her sisters could fade away.
Lockwood is trapped in that dance, the same as Albrecht, she thinks, something beyond him pushing him to exhaustion and death. George is right, as he often is, that she has no responsibility to save him. She couldn't, if he decided to walk away from her efforts. But she’ll try.
George seems to read her mind, because his shoulders slump, and he rolls his eyes. “Of course, you’re nearly as bad as he is.”
“You should take your own advice, George. You don't have to protect us from ourselves.”
He picks up Lockwood’s mug with a heavy sigh. “Well, I can't exactly leave you idiots to your own devices. Last time, you burned a house down.”
She smiles at him, wearily, and he returns it.
They head to the library.
It’s quiet. Lockwood has himself tucked into an armchair, long limbs folded up like a clothing rack to take up as little space as possible. He keeps his eyes stubbornly on the gossip magazine he's ‘reading’, not even looking up when George places his mug on the side table.
Lucy knows this game. Lockwood has patience, and stubbornness, and he’ll sit there in silence as long as he can stand it trying to force them to give in first.
She could, but showing that she’s unwilling to wait like that won’t get her anywhere with him in this state.
He’s not their Lockwood, right now, not the boy who spent weeks without a suit and tie with them because his injured arm wouldn't let him wear his stupid button-downs and suit jackets. This is the boy who challenged Kipps to a wager that could've cost them their agency, on a case that killed a man.
This Lockwood is cunning and willing to sink his fangs into any weakness, and impatience is a weakness. If she comes out and starts shouting, he'll just smile that smug smile, and rile her up until she's so mad she has to leave. So Lucy’ll wait, and while she certainly wishes she could've gotten some sleep before doing this, she's not going to let it stew for any longer than she has to.
She picks up one of George’s comics. George picks up a book on the Problem, and after he settles back into their couch, she slings her feet across his lap, leaning back against the arm of it. George raises an eyebrow, but then just wrestles one of their throw blankets over her legs, and balls another up to toss at Lockwood, who’s practically shivering without a fire going.
They don't say a word. Lockwood is stubborn, yes, but they didn't get their positions in his company by not matching him. Lucy is just as stubborn, and her anger isn't going anywhere. George is stubborn too, in his own way, when it comes to pushing back against Lockwood’s idiocy.
Besides, the comic is actually pretty interesting.
It takes an hour for the first crack in Lockwood’s mask to start showing. His foot starts bouncing, casting furtive glances at where his two friends are practically piled on top of each other.
That’s another thing about him that Lucy knows. He’s a jealous person. Deeply so. He was jealous when they discovered she could talk to Type Threes. He was jealous when Kipps tried to ask her out, and when Kipps got jobs they weren't offered and when Kipps…did most things, actually. But he's especially jealous when it comes to affection.
George isn't particularly affectionate, not conventionally, and that's part of the reason Lockwood was so against Joplin, even when they didn't know she was evil. And Lucy- Lucy doesn't trust, not easily enough to give out the kind of easygoing attitude she’s just granted George. She knew he’d get jealous, one way or another, when she chose to sit with the researcher.
(It was definitely just that, and had nothing to do with that fact that George was still the warmest person in the house, and Lucy had been in the January cold all morning.)
Another half hour after that, Lockwood stopped turning the pages of his magazine. The staring wasn't open, technically, but near enough, and there were a dozen emotions Lucy wasn't bothering to read flickering over his face.
Lucy just keeps reading George’s comic. It was actually quite good, even if she had skipped a couple issues between the last one George had lent her and this one. George himself seems entirely engrossed in his book, even though the thing was dog-eared and tagged and annotated to hell and back already. It was endearing, actually. Lucy had found herself skimming over the notes every so often, absorbing knowledge she already knew but in that uniquely George format.
She allows a smile at George's nose being practically stuck in the spine of the thing, and then turns back to the brightly coloured illustrations.
Lockwood is practically vibrating by the time curfew comes around, and Lucy’s progressed from the comic—which she finished rather quickly, actually, she’ll have to snag the next one from George’s room—to reading George’s book from where it rests across her knees. They don’t have a conversation going, necessarily, but sometimes she’ll point at something and he’ll mutter an explanation.
It's only another ten minutes before Lockwood tosses his magazine onto the coffee table and hisses, “Just get on with it!”
Lucy lifts her eyes lazily, returning his earlier energy, tilting her head curiously. “Get on with what?”
“Shout, yell, get angry! I know you’re mad. I just don't know what you want.”
She exchanges a look with George, then sighs.
“I’m done being mad, Lockwood. I don't like when you try and martyr yourself, and you know that. What is me being mad going to do? It hasn't worked before.”
Lockwood seems stunned, almost, and looks at George helplessly.
“What’re you looking at me for? I’ve told you before I’m not saving you from her.”
“I don’t-“
“Understand?” She cuts him off. “I guess that makes two of us, because I don't either. But if you won't accept my help, I can't make you. I’m not just going to let it happen, but there's no point in the screaming matches.”
His brows furrow. It’s an unfortunately familiar expression on him, the one that means he's trying to put pieces together.
“I’m not-“ He stops, and Lucy waits, because now that he's talking she’s not going to stop him. George, beside her, closes the book quietly, a little bookmark that she’s pretty sure Lockwood bought him slipped in between the pages.
“I’m not martyring myself,” Is what he settles on. George snorts incredulously. He slips out from under Lucy’s legs, making sure her blanket doesn't fall off, and pulls a dictionary off the shelf.
Lucy expects him to read it, but instead he tosses it to Lockwood.
“It's under m, in case you’re confused.”
Lockwood hesitates, and then opens the pages. His fingers are shaking as he leafs through them. He finds the page, and reads quietly. When he’s done, George raises another eyebrow. It’s a patented George Look™️, the waiting before they have to admit he’s right.
“I’m not…trying to martyr myself,” Lockwood amends.
Lucy shrugs. “Then don’t.”
“It’s not that easy, Luce-“
“It is, actually,” She says. George settles back underneath her legs. “You’ve got issues, we all do, but you’ve got enough brain cells in that thick skull of yours to stop just accepting death.”
His mouth opens, like he’s going to retort, but then he doesn't.
“I'm not saying it's going to be quick, Lockwood. I’m not an idiot, despite what George thinks.” The boy in question snorts, aiming a playful punch at her shoulder. “I’m saying that you can start. Just…think about things. Try to come up with a plan that isn't self-sacrificial, or I’ll do it for you.”
His eyes fall, and Lucy watches his face contort a bit, before he nods defeatedly. “Alright, Luce.”
She watches him for a moment. He's conceding the match, she's got him too off-balance to argue, but she can tell he's not really listening.
“Have either you ever been to a ballet?”
It startles both of her boys, she can tell. It seems out of the blue, to them.
“Yeah, once,” George says carefully, “Mum wanted us to go see the Nutcracker for Christmas. Four young boys in a ballet, I’m sure you can imagine how that went. We never went back.”
Lucy hums in agreement, and turns to Lockwood. He’s got a curious look back in his eyes, which brings her some amount of relief.
“I never got a chance to. Why?”
She turns to look at the ceiling. “Mum took me and my sisters to one, just once. It was called Giselle. The story goes that there’s this prince named Albrecht pretending to be some common guy, and both he and this hunter, Hilarion, are in love with this girl from the village, Giselle. Hilarion finds evidence of Albrecht’s lies, and shows everyone the truth. Giselle, who loved him, dies from the betrayal.”
She sighs. “I asked mum, once, about her death. She said that in some versions, Giselle just dances until she dies. In some, she kills herself, driven mad by the grief. She thought it was a cop-out, for her to just dance until she fell. Either way, a group of spirits, scorned women who couldn't move on, come to take her into their sisterhood. They kill Hilarion, forcing him to dance until he dies, and then, when Albrecht comes to put flowers on Giselle’s grave, they try to do the same for him.
“Giselle stops them. Alone, she holds them off until four am, when the spirits lose their power. She and Albrecht get to look at each other, but can’t even touch to say goodbye, because Giselle is already dead.”
Telling the whole thing out loud, she thinks she got it wrong, before. She isn't Giselle, desperately protecting a man she loved but didn't know. She’s Albrecht, trying to love someone who could be gone at any moment.
Lockwood is the one poised with a dagger above his heart, the curtains ready to fall. She is the one who will be left dancing, spinning endlessly without rest until her body gives out. It’s Lockwood whose love can prevent that fate.
George places a gentle hand on her knee, squeezing just enough to tear her eyes from the ceiling.
But Lockwood is the one that speaks. “No one is dying in this story, Lucy.”
She smiles, watery and sad, “Sure.”
George scrunches his face, “I’m not even sure who I’d be in this allegory.”
Lucy laughs, startled and wet, but a laugh nonetheless. “We can share Albrecht, George, don't worry.”
“Maybe I don't want to be Albrecht, Lucy, maybe I should be…like, a duck. There’s a duck somewhere in there, right?”
Lockwood chuckles, “No, you’re thinking about Swan Lake, George. Different ballet.”
Lucy catches Lockwood’s eyes, and when he nods solemnly at her, she knows he’s heard her.
George huffs over them, rolling his eyes, and the spell is broken. The tension and sadness lifts, and leaves just the three of them together.
George cooks that night, not that George doesn't usually cook, but he overdoes it slightly, insisting that both of them look absolutely haggard, how do you manage that?
Instead of them taking up their usual places across the table from each other, Lucy and George squish Lockwood’s impressively lanky frame in-between them, and they stay like that for a while. Once they’ve finished eating, Lucy wrangles her boys back to the library, and tucks Lockwood onto the couch so she can sprawl insistently across his lap, and George takes up his position back under the curve of her knees, knocking elbows with Lockwood.
Lucy goes back to asking inane questions about George’s book, and Lockwood starts butting in with blatantly incorrect answers, and they fall asleep like that, piled up together.
A week and a solved case later (the source had been an old knife, left over from a murder), Lockwood hands her three tickets to the local ballet. Not Giselle, because she’d confessed that she’d practically memorised the whole thing and wanted desperately to see something new.
He grins at her confusion at the title—Don Quixote, he’ll share in the cab, used to be his mother’s favourite ballet—self-satisfied that he’d found one she didn't know.
She slips herself into a pretty dress. Not church clothes this time, or the dress she’d worn to the party at Fittes, but a pretty black dress that reaches her mid-calf, with long sleeves and an over-skirt embroidered with little stars. She’s not sure where Lockwood and George got it, but they’d pushed it across the table at her over breakfast looking particularly happy with themselves.
George and Lockwood both wear suits, George in something similar to Lockwood’s usual attire, although he’s somehow found a black shirt embroidered with the same little stars as her dress, and Lockwood’s added a waistcoat that’s the same.
Lucy smiles at them, wide and happy, and they catch a cab out, rapiers and kit-bags left behind. For one night, there are no spirits to chase them, none of their ghosts haunting them. Just three teenagers and a show.
For the first time in a while, she feels that frantic dance begin to slow. And she thinks, maybe, that things are going to be okay.