Work Text:
The hand I have pressed to Baz’s thigh grips tighter. The passing hues of greenery start to muddle together, picking up into blurs of tree branches and breaking out into rolling fields of yellowed grass and scattered farms. Rocks kick under our tires, the unpaved gravel roads jostling with the flashy speed of Baz’s sports car.
Despite it being so awfully pretty, but it feels bleak to me. Everything feels bleak to me, especially the bouquet in my hand.
The call came through the other day while I was sitting around, having my afternoon tea, and I haven’t been able to breathe properly since.
The static of an ocean’s distance made my stomach pitch; it’s as if I were on a boat traveling towards the words. “I think… I think I know who your mum is,” Agatha said into her end. It feels unreal; eternal, just as she looks. “I don’t know why it just hit me, I just… It’s a long story, Simon, but that picture you just posted of yourself… I just can’t shake it. You look just like a woman in a photograph I've got. Her name's Lucy.”
“Lucy?” My voice sounded alien. Unheard of, even, to myself. I wouldn’t be quite sure if I was awake, if it weren’t for Baz’s hand pressed to my back. “Lucy… Lucy what?”
“I… I think Salisbury? You met her mum, Si. At those ritzy Holiday runs; Lady Salisbury.”
My hands had gone numb, eyes unable to land on anything near me. It all feels gone; disappeared into nothingness with only a few words. “Sure, yeah.”
I hear her scoff, or sigh. Something like that. “Si? Simon, you’re going to have to speak up; it’s hard to hear.”
“Yeah, I remember her.” I was spinning into an abyss. “I’m… I’ll go check this for myself. Thanks.” I don’t know if I finished exchanging niceties with her after that, I just know my phone had landed on the couch and Baz was trying to comfort me (he doesn’t even know what for; why’s he so good to me?)
It breaks out of me, eventually. “We found a name for my mum,” I muttered, eyes finally finding themselves locked forward onto the exposed brick wall of the flat, tracing the maze of the pattern. “We, uh… it’s… Lucy. Lucy Salisbury, probably.”
“Probably?”
“If she married my dad, it’d be different.” I swallowed, eyes closing slowly. “We should check public record anyway. Bound to be something…”
There was.
In an archived paper rested a death notice of a date around my assumed birthday and a funeral location in a rural area up North. Died during childbirth.
Lady Salisbury’s still alive, but we didn't bother with that yet . I’ll get to it eventually, I tell myself, but I’m in no rush for that. Instead, I just prioritized visiting the grave site.
I didn't get any information on whoever my father is, but I'm not sure if it matters much now. If he’s alive, fuck him. He could've kept me; he could've brought me to my gran, who's quite well off and clearly magickal, but instead he left me to rot in a home.
He could've changed my life, but he didn’t.
The car cuts right outside the gravesite. It’s by an abandoned cottage with a nice view. The makeshift chicken coop and the little chimney makes it overwhelming and much, much too real.
The headstone’s small; a few words rest on it, clear as day even in the sinking sunlight. Her name, the year of birth and death, and the simple words “mother and daughter”.
At first, I stand, hovering above the stone and most likely feet above her body, resting peacefully in the ground. Two shadows cast over the sight, one with a tail and hidden wings, and the other his boyfriend, comfortingly at his side.
We look so out of place, as if this grave was never meant to be fully touched. As if it was meant to be left to die with her.
Trying to follow the moss lines with my eyes, it dawns on me what I’m reading.
She was young.
Barely even my age; barely out of Watford.
Painfully, unexpectedly young.
It breaks the block in my throat, choking out the sob I was barely struggling to keep down. She was barely an adult; she should've been in uni. She should've been successful.
The flowers slip from my palm, shuffling to thump at my feet as I break out into another sob, hands covering my face. As my body sways, it rests its weight against Baz, who catches me without hesitation. It’s there I sink, falling against his legs and leaning into him there, letting out defeated heaves of my chest.
She wouldn't be any older than Penny’s mum. She'd be so young, she'd be here.
I could reach out and hold her; I could say sorry for thinking that she had left me by choice.
Through blurred, teary eyes and shaking fingertips, I reach across and trace the engraving of her name. It makes me sputter, gasping for air. “Lucy,” I say with it, feeling Baz around me as he collects me into his arms. I feel like a dead weight.
I think Baz is saying something, since there's a definite rumble in his chest, but it's gone into thin air. His words barely exist beyond the reassurance that he’s still there, despite my acknowledgment of his arms around me. His hands gently smooth back my hair, pressing rubs up and down my spine as he murmurs unheard words into my ears.
His shirt slowly stains from my tears, soaking through and making the rest of my face damp. The sun's sinking around us, leaving a soft blue glow for us to bathe in.
As he pulls back from me and tries to urge me up, I shake my head with a slight hesitation. “Go back to the car,” I whisper. “I want… I need a second.”
He doesn't protest, leaving me alone to face my mother’s grave.
It’s so unfair.
“It’s so unfair,” I utter, breath only forming words for her and I. My hands occupy themselves, shuffling the flowers and laying them nice and prettily at the base of the stone. “I'm sorry for hating you. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you I love you. I'm sorry…” I swallow. “I’m sorry I did this to you, but I promise, I’m doing fine. Life is hard, it's been hard, but I'm happy.”
After wiping my eyes and rising to my feet, I whisper out my last thoughts as my fingertips trail over the top of the stone. “I hope you’d be proud of me.”