Chapter Text
She dreamed he was dead again.
She could see him the way she saw him at Aickmere’s, his coat in tatters, his shirt ripped to open to bare his chest, and his chest was ripped open too, skin bloody, ribs broken.
Except it wasn’t just like before. He wasn’t standing before her in wisps of pale smoke, smiling sadly. He was lying on the ground, one arm flung above his head like he sometimes slept, but his chest was hollowed out, his heart torn away, she could see where it was meant to be but it was gone.
She dropped to her knees beside him, touching his neck, his cheek, his forehead. But he was cold. She recoiled, her breath catching, and then she saw his eyes. His beautiful dark eyes, blank and empty, the pupils blown, vacant as a starless midnight sky, staring sightlessly past her.
There was no deathglow. No Visitor. Nothing left of him but his empty broken body.
She tried to scream but no sound came out. Her whole body shook as she cupped his face in her hands and bent over him, pressing her forehead to his. Still he stared, and no breath warmed her cheek, and instead there were spiders, vicious and biting, they poured out of his mouth and crawled over his cold body, and-
Lucy jerked awake, a scream breaking off in her throat. For a dizzying moment she didn’t know where she was, and she had to stare at the shadowed rafters in a haze while she waited for her breath to come back.
She wasn’t in Aickmere’s or the ancient prison below. She wasn’t in her shabby studio apartment. She was in her cozily cluttered attic in Portland Row. And Lockwood wasn’t dead. He was sleeping in his room downstairs, safe.
She took a mental inventory. It was cold, even under the covers, and she could see faint ghostlight seeping through the blinds in her shadowed attic. Her heart was beating too fast, but that would settle. Her arm still throbbed from the knife wound she’d gotten the day before and she could feel the weight of the bandages. The house was quiet outside of the faint settling creaks that she’d become used to hearing, not even a peep from the boys downstairs.
She exhaled slowly. Everything was fine. It was just a stupid dream.
George had been right when he’d told her that nightmares were just part of the job. She’d had them her whole life, as soon her talent started to grow and expand, pushing at her limits. When she was thirteen and still little and still frightened she would wake up to Norrie stroking her hair and telling her over and over that it’s just a dream, love, dreams can’t hurt you . And after what happened at the mill the dreams felt stronger, more vivid, and no one was there anymore to reassure her back to safe sleep.
Instead she had learned how to wake herself up, to talk herself down, to make herself doze back off. She’d gotten pretty good at it.
But every time Lucy closed her eyes she saw Lockwood again, broken and bleeding out on the stone floor, and every time her heart rate spiked, nausea twisting in her stomach.
Maybe it was a mistake to come back, she thought. I left to keep him safe, maybe I shouldn’t be here.
She would never be able to sleep if she couldn’t see for herself that he was safe. Before she could talk herself out of it she threw the covers back and climbed out of bed.
It was a cool rainy night, cold even for April, and she shivered as she headed down the stairs. She was freezing, even in her flannel pajamas and socks, but this would only take a second. It wouldn’t take long for her to peek in, make sure that he was safe and sleeping, and then dart back up to her room.
Except when she got to his room, the door was open, the covers on the bed were in wild disarray, and he was gone.
Her blood ran cold. “Lockwood,” she whispered.
She ran down the stairs, checking for him. He hadn’t fallen asleep in the library, he wasn’t making himself tea in the kitchen, he wasn’t practicing in the basement. He was gone.
She started to run up the spiral staircase, her socked feet slipping, and then she heard an odd sound. Metal scraping against wood.
Lucy froze. If there was a Visitor in the house, she was unarmed. But if there was, and it was targeting Lockwood, a few seconds could be the difference.
She ran. Just reckless enough.
And then she stopped short. Lockwood wandered towards the stairs leading back up towards the attic, his rapier dangling from his fingers and trailing along the wall.
“Jesus, Lockwood!” she said. “What’s wrong? Is there something in the house.”
He kept walking, his steps slow and unsteady. The tip of his rapier scraped the wall again as he reached the landing and he shivered. He was dressed only in a pair of thin pajama bottoms and his skin was so pale he seemed blue.
Lucy caught up to him. “What’s wrong?” she asked again, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Should I get my rapier?”
He took another step forward, starting the ascent towards her attic, but he wobbled, his knees threatening to buckle. Lucy caught him by the arm and stepped around in front of him, and then froze.
Lockwood’s eyes were open and staring at her without actually seeing her, wide and glazed over. It took a sickening moment before it sank in.
“Oh,” she said softly as she searched his face. He was sleepwalking.
Lucy squeezed his upper arms. “Lockwood, you’re okay,” she said. “Let’s get you back to bed.”
He swallowed hard, his adam's apple bobbing. “Lucy,” he rasped.
“Yes, yes, it’s Lucy,” she said. She tried to rub some warmth into his biceps. “Jesus, you’re like ice.”
He adjusted his grip on his rapier. “Have to…Lucy,” he mumbled, and he tried to keep walking.
She took another step up and glanced back over her shoulder. He was trying to go up to her attic. Was he trying to check on her? In his sleep?
“It’s all right,” she said softly. “I’m okay.”
“Lucy,” he said again, more insistent, his voice cracking. “Lucy’s…gone.”
“I’m not, I’m not, I’m right here,” she said. Standing on the step above him made her nearly the same height; she cupped his face in her hands and pressed her forehead against his. “I’m here, babes, I’m right here. I’m not gone.”
His free hand trailed through her hair, tangling and winding. She pressed herself closer, their noses bumping lightly. “It’s me, Lockwood, it’s Lucy,” she whispered. She could feel his soft warm breath against her lips. “I’m here, I’m alive.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “Lucy,” he breathed, and his shoulders slumped. Lucy quickly slipped the rapier from his limp fingers before he could hurt himself. “Safe?”
“Yes, safe,” she said. She ran her thumb along the curve of his cheek. “Let’s get you back to bed, okay?”
Lucy leaned his rapier against the wall and wrapped her arm around his thin waist. She wished she could wake him up and ask him questions, but she’d always heard it was bad to wake a sleepwalker.
She managed to get him down to the next landing, but he stumbled away from her. “Where are you going?” she whispered. “Come back.”
Lockwood pressed his hand against the always closed door. “Jess,” he mumbled, his eyes half shut. “Jessica, have to…Jessica’s safe?”
Lucy’s heart squeezed in her chest. What was she supposed to say?
She slipped her arm back around his waist, turning him away from the door. “It’s okay,” she said. “Everything’s okay. Come on. I’ve got you.”
Thankfully he allowed her to lead him away, his steps unsteady. His skin felt like ice, but she could still feel that he was real, he was alive, he was in her arms.
She walked him into his room and nudged him to sit on the bed. “You need a shirt, you’re freezing,” she informed him. He said nothing, his chin tipped towards his chest.
Lucy dug through his drawers, searching for something warm to put on him, and her fingers brushed something familiar. She tugged it out.
It was one of her sweaters. The soft baby blue one, the one she liked to wear to sleep in on particularly cold nights. All this time she’d assumed that her laundry service had lost it or something, but no. It had been here all along, neat and safe in the bottom of Lockwood’s drawer.
Lucy turned to look at him, holding the jumper against her chest. She’d spent the past four months thinking about him, dreaming about him, torturing her brain with the image of him hurt, injured, dying. Wondering if she could keep him safe and terrified she would fail.
Had he been doing the same, all this time?
She tucked the sweater back where she found it, nice and neat, and picked up a well-washed waffle knit henley that she had seen him wear during a particularly bad cold snap during the previous January. “Come on, help me a little bit,” she said. She was able to get it over his head, but wrestling his arms through the long sleeves was another matter. He wouldn’t stop moving, and he was still mumbling under his breath, a steady stream of one-sided dialogue that she couldn’t quite catch.
His pale skin was a map of small scars and fresh bruising- rapier knicks, bad cuts from worse falls, burns left after magnesium flares. Some of them looked fresh, still healing, and she bit her lip as she tugged the hem down over his stomach.
“You were…you were screaming,” he mumbled, his words slurring. Lucy took a step back. “I found you, you were screaming.”
She didn’t know what he meant at first, and then it hit her. He was dreaming about Aickmere’s too. After the Fetch faded, when the real Lockwood materialized in front of her again, warm and solid and smiling, all she could do was scream. She didn’t even know why. It was like someone popped a valve and her fear and sorrow and panic erupted out of her like steam.
Lockwood’s smile had dropped immediately. He had run over to her and pulled her into a crushing hug, his hand on the back of her head. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he’d said, not even wincing as she clutched at him too tight. “Are you hurt? Did something happen?”
She hadn’t been able to say anything. All she could do was cling to him, screaming until it turned into sobbing, and then she’d cried into his shoulder until she couldn’t cry anymore, and she’d pulled away from him self-consciously as she dashed at her eyes.
Did he play that back in his mind the way she thought about his broken, bleeding body? Did he think of her the way she thought of him?
“Go ahead and lie down,” she told him gently, but Lockwood reached for her instead, his hand shaking. She held very still, letting his palm press against her cheek.
“Please tell me you’re home,” he whispered. “I want…I wanted you to come home.”
For a moment he sounded lucid enough that he might be awake, but his eyes were still hazy. To her relief, though, they weren’t the blank sightless stare from her dream. His eyes were warm coffee brown, deep and rich, flecked with hints of amber around the iris. She knew them better than she knew her own.
Lucy tilted her cheek into his palm; he closed his eyes, his lips parting in a sigh of relief. “I’m home,”’ she said softly. “And I won’t be going anywhere. Now go to sleep.”
He allowed her to ease him back against the pillows, and by the time she tucked the covers around his shoulders he was fast asleep, no longer restless. Lucy lingered for a moment, watching his chest rise and fall. He was alive, and she was home. They were safe. They were going to keep each other safe.
For a wild second she thought about leaning over to kiss his forehead. But she immediately thought of the risk if he would finally wake up to that, and she went back to her attic and crawled into bed instead. She didn’t dream of him dying. She dreamed of him sleeping, calm and peaceful, her sweater clasped in his hands. Maybe it would keep the nightmares at bay. Maybe they’d disappear if she decided to come home for good.