Work Text:
Home is a complicated thing for Susan Trinder.
Really, lots of things are complicated for Susan Trinder. Identity, for one thing, because she isn’t Susan Trinder but Miss Smith or Susan Lilly or maybe Maud, if you think about it abstractly.
But thinking of that gives the fingersmith – who shall, for the sake of continuity simply be named Sue – a headache. Home does not, though it’s certainly complicated.
See, when Sue was young, a little girl, home was the Borough. Home was the house on Lant Street and the noise and bustle of London. Home was Mrs. Sucksby and Mr. Ibbs and Dainty and even John Vroom, and all the petty thieves that stopped by to see Mr. Ibbs and all the people yelling in the streets.
Then Sue left home. Briar never became home to her, and now home was something she longed for, missed, wanted, looked forward to. Those days are dark and dull, seen through a veil when Sue takes the time to look through the memories. She does not do this often.
But somehow, somewhere along the way and without Sue noticing, home changed. Home wasn’t Lant Street anymore, home was Maud Lily. The strange quiet, almost cryptic girl who lived at Briar with her uncle. Sue was surprised to find, many weeks into her stay at Briar, that Maud wasn’t really all that bad. She wasn’t kind, wasn’t sweet in the ordinary sense of the word because nothing was ordinary about Maud Lilly, but there was something about her. Something, at times, when she wasn’t quietly brooding or brusque or anything, she was…something. That’s all Sue can think of to describe it, because there are no words to adequately describe Maud Lilly.
Then home was struck by lightning and ruined.
Or not struck by lightning, perhaps, but broken. Crumbled because home was a lie, because Maud wasn’t anything but a swindler who turned Sue’s own tricks on her.
In those days, when Sue was wandering aimlessly around the grounds of the madhouse, Sue was angry. Angry doesn’t begin to cover it, doesn’t come close to the boiling hot fury that flipped her stomach when she thought of Maud and made Sue want to punch the nearest person, hear the satisfying crack of bone and feel flesh give way. Maud was a liar, a thief, an anything that was not home.
Sue had no home.
Even Mrs. Sucksby wasn’t home, not really. Yes, Sue wanted to return to the house at Lant Street, smell the wooden floors and hear the children playing in the street, but that’s because it’s familiar, not home. Sue didn’t have a home, even if she wouldn’t admit that to herself.
Even after, after everything, Gentleman’s death and Mrs. Sucksby’s death and Mr. Ibbs arrest, when Sue has a fever, she’s still homeless. Even as Dainty takes care of Sue and listens to her delirious talking (about Maud, only ever about Maud), Sue is homeless. She loves Dainty, but Dainty isn’t home. A temporary place, an inn maybe, where Sue is taken care of and safe and when the next day comes Sue can leave and be on her way again. Go home again.
Then Sue finds Maud, and moves into Briar and has a home. It’s strange to be back, to see the hallways so empty where they were once bustling with servants. Now the halls are empty, and Sue wanders through them while Maud sits in the study and writes.
Most days, they’re happy. They talk and laugh and Maud reads to Sue at night, and she falls asleep with a smile. But they’ve seen too much to be really happy, and some days Sue feels like she has gone insane.
Sue wakes up, intending to kill Maud for what she did to Sue and then she blinks and sees Maud lying next to her and remembers that she won’t, can’t, loves Maud and it wasn’t her fault and Sue was just as wicked. But then throughout the day, Sue will still be so mad because it was Maud’s fault that she was sent to the madhouse, and every memory of it that Sue has is Maud’s fault.
Some days, Sue stays away from Maud because she can’t bear the sight of her (Maud doesn’t mind, never comments on it.)
Some days, Maud is quiet and closed off and writes until the early morning, just to do something, anything. Sue doesn’t understand why Maud does that, when she is just as bad (just some days, though.) Some days, Maud won’t say a word to Sue, and they eat dinner in silence, sitting at the grand table and avoiding each other’s eyes for their own reasons.
Some days, they go to Maud’s mother’s (Sue’s mother, their mother maybe?) grave and sit there and watch the way the raindrops roll off it and seep into the ground.
So Sue has a home again, and Maud has a home again but the roof has collapsed and the walls are crumbling and some days, Sue thinks it might be better to stand outside.