Work Text:
Lucie felt stuffy as she was staring at the city from above with furrowed brows.
Every time she went on the rooftop of the Institute, she was fascinated by the wizardry of the street lightning, which had made life easier for people like her who hunted demons during the night. She had written a piece on how those small lamps had improved the lives of shadowhunters and her own, and on how grateful she was to the person who invented electricity. Thanks to her desk lamp she could, after all, write until she pleased. That night, however, she didn’t stare in bewilderment and fascination at the modern innovations of London.
Lucie gripped the railing and imagined that the iron bar of which it was made must be feeling the same sensations as herself. She was suffocating it with her tight hold. She wanted to be like that motionless fence, at least she wouldn’t be clogged by the dread and feel like her life depended on how firm was the grip. Because it’s the tightness of the grip that decides whether you choke or not.
Her hand reached her neck, then it descended to touch the silver necklace she had been wearing ever since that night at the cemetery when James risked to die.
The symbol of life and death.
“Clearing your head?”
Jesse.
Lucie knew who it was before she turned her head to glance at him. She didn’t jolt anymore at the sound of his voice. “Sort of,” she replied, hoping he wouldn’t catch the dejection in her tone.
“Someone angered you at dinner?”
“Is this an interrogation?” Lucie inquired.
“What? Of course not, Lucie. I can leave if you want,” Jesse offered, trying to touch the railing next to him and failing.
It was a simple gesture, yet Lucie was pained by it. She felt the grip tighten around her neck, taking hold of her bones. He was the cause of some of her distressing thoughts, but she would never tell him.
“Don’t leave, please,” she decided. His pale and ghostly hand was still the object of her stares. She had to stop focusing on it or he would realize the reason of her anguish.
“Tonight the sky is perfect for stargazing,” Jesse affirmed after a while.
“Stargazing?”
“It means watching the stars.”
“I know what it means,” Lucie protested with a frown. “Are you passionate about stars?”
Jesse’s face lit up when she asked him, which already gave her an answer. “You know that I’ve got a lot of time on my hands and that I’m only up at night,” he replied.
Sadly, I do, Lucie wanted to say, but she held her tongue. “Do you look at the sky often?”
“You should see the view from Chiswick. There is not much pollution because it’s not downtown like the Institute. The sky is clearer, brighter. It’s easy to spot stars.”
“You know how to spot stars?”
“Now who is the one who is shooting question after question,” he laughed.
Lucie rolled her eyes and looked at the lights of the city again. “I’m just curious, that is all.”
“I was joking.”
She noticed that he had tiptoed close to her. The quietness of his pace amazed her. “Are there stars in the sky to see tonight?”
“The stars are like ghosts, Lucie. You never see them during the day, but they are always up there,” he explained cordially. “You see that one that seem to shine more than the others around her?”
“Uhm, yes? The white one?”
“Yes, that one. That’s Canopus. It’s the second brightest star. It’s part of the Argo constellation.”
Lucie awed at the new information. “That’s me, then,” she declared without thinking.
“You?”
She glanced at him. He had put his arm behind her back. She could see his faint hand on the other side of her body. He was embracing her without really touching her because she couldn’t feel his hands on her. It was a gloomy sensation not being able to touch someone you loved. Her heart raced in her chest at the sudden invasion of her personal space. She looked at his hand and he withdrew it.
“I didn’t mean to touch you without your permission,” he apologized.
“You don’t have to apologize, Jesse.” After all, you weren’t even touching me, she added in her head.
He nodded and bit his lip before looking at her with his intense green eyes. “Why do you think you’re the second brightest star, Lucie?”
“I never said that.”
Jesse raised an eyebrow. Damn him and his sharp memory…
“Alright, alright. I did say it,” Lucie admitted, studying the sky and trying to locate the star again.
“Who is the brightest star?” Jesse asked. “It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me.”
Lucie’s eyes focused back on Jesse. The sky was indeed clear and they weren’t in total darkness since her parents had decided to install a few lampposts on the roof, but his body could be still barely perceived.
“It’s James,” Lucie murmured. She didn’t want to say it out loud, but she knew Jesse wouldn’t judge her. She wasn’t jealous of her brother. She loved her brother, but sometimes everyone’s attention was on him. “James can turn into a shadow,” she added. “Everyone seems to regard this with anticipation and consternation, you know? No one still knows what he’s capable of and if he is in danger because of the recent attacks. Plus, our grandfather, he… he never acknowledged me.”
“Care to explain?”
Lucie sighed. “One time a demon told him something about our grandfather. Something that would also be directed at me as his niece, but he overlooked me as if I didn’t exist.”
“You don’t need to be acknowledged by a greater demon to be relevant, Lucie,” Jesse stated. “You are already relevant. You probably don’t see it, but… whenever you write or whenever you do something you like, whenever you help your friends, your eyes burn with passion and energy. With life. You burn fiercely for other people. You’re burning right now and you don’t even realize it.”
Lucie’s hand instinctively gripped Jesse’s necklace. She would not admit that he was right, that she was on fire because she wanted to help him but at the same time, she knew it was against the law. The same fire was suffocating her.
“I’ve never seen it that way.”
“I’m glad to have provided you with a new point of view,” Jesse grinned.
She also grinned in response. “Now, back to the stars. Can you tell me more?”
“Of course, of course.”
Lucie could not lie to herself. She still couldn’t shake the grief off her body, but she could say that she didn’t feel as hopeless as before.
Jesse once told her that she was the light in his lightless world, but he didn’t know how much that statement could apply to her as well.