Work Text:
one (the locker room)
“You can’t have your hair down,” Jacobs says when Lucy lines up for her first job. “Go fix it.”
“I don’t know how, sir,” Lucy replies. Her voice comes out reedy and thin, betraying the fear she’s tried to swallow at every meal today only for it to rise back in her throat and into the toilet, burning and bitter.
“I can help her,” Norrie says. Norrie’s hair is twisted in a mass of red braid at the nape of her neck. Lucy has been staring at it all day, trying to figure out the ends and beginnings and what it might feel like to let it down, to run her fingers through rivers of rust.
“How long?”
“Five minutes. Come on, Lucy.”
Obediently, Lucy follows Norrie back into the locker room. Norrie pulls a little bag from her locker and straddles one of the benches, gesturing for Lucy to sit between her legs. Lucy does and Norrie pulls the band holding her hair back in a ponytail out.
“You have so much hair, oh my God.” She brushes her fingers through it, dividing it into two thick chunks.
“Sorry,” Lucy says, not quite sure what the protocol is for this sort of thing. It feels so nice to have gentle hands in her hair that her brain isn’t working quite right.
“No, don’t be. It’s really pretty.”
And suddenly Lucy is overjoyed to have her back to Norrie’s front, because she’s sure her face has turned the colour of an overripe tomato. Norrie is clearly skilled at doing hair, because five minutes later, as promised, Lucy’s hair is pinned into a plaited mass that feels like it wouldn’t go anywhere in a tornado. She seizes Lucy’s shoulders and turns her.
“There.” She smoothes down some of the flyaways around Lucy’s face, her hands lingering on her cheeks. “Now we match.”
Lucy beams. Being an agent is so far from what she ever wanted to do, but maybe – just maybe – it won’t be quite so bad.
two (the sleepover)
“Okay, I have makeup and my mom’s curling iron. My foundation isn’t gonna be perfect for you, but it’ll be good enough and this is just for fun anyway.” Norrie whips Lucy’s desk chair back. “Sit.”
Lucy does. “You’re sure this isn’t gonna burn my hair off? ‘Cause-”
“It’s not!” Norrie laughs. Oh, how Lucy loves her laugh. “It’s not, I swear. You’re just going to be the most beautiful cloud of ringlets.”
“I trust you.”
Soon there are layers of warm curls laying across Lucy’s shoulders, her straight posture and still body the model of a mediaeval royal. It seems that this moment should be frozen in time, painted or photographed or otherwise memorialised – a picture of a young girl seeing her own beauty for the first time.
Norrie bends to meet Lucy’s eyes in the mirror. “See? I told you. Pretty.”
Lucy turns her head ever so slightly, her nose brushing against Norrie’s. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
And Norrie’s eyes are the richest shade of green from this angle, like shards of sea glass cracked into perfect rounds, and her cheeks flush like they’re trying to compete with her hair.
“Can I–” She starts, softly.
“Yes,” Lucy says as little more than an exhale, even though she’s not wholly sure what Norrie was asking. It’s yes for her, though, always.
Leaning forward, Norrie kisses Lucy, hardly the barest press of her lips. It’s nothing like it is in the books, no bolt of electricity or rush of heat: just a little burst in Lucy’s chest that this is oh-so-right, and that she’d count her first kiss but her second and third and fortieth as well, if she was lucky enough to get them.
When Norrie pulls back (time did slow a little, as far as literary dreams go), there’s a question in those verdant eyes.
Lucy nods. “Yes. Yeah, yes.”
What a stupid thing to say, maybe, but Norrie breaks into giggles.
“Okay.”
Somehow everything has changed and nothing has, because they fall right back into their plans for the night, wrapping Lucy’s bedsheets over their clothes like elaborate evening gowns and playing at a London red carpet. But when they collapse onto Lucy’s twin mattress, giggling and sweaty and without a care in the world (including taking their makeup off, however much they’ll regret in the morning), it feels like a primogenial version of what they’ll one day become, the space that one day they’ll share.
three (the mill)
Norrie pushes the last pin into Lucy’s braids and presses a soft kiss to the side of her neck, a good luck charm that Lucy will carry with her through the job.
“One day closer,” Norrie says, inquiry wrapped up in those neat three words.
“One day closer,” Lucy replies – a promise that she remembers her signature under Marissa Fittes’ picture, that she’ll be there when it’s time to go. She slips her hand into Norrie’s and gives it the slightest squeeze. Norrie reciprocates and now they can leave for the job, their little dance of devotion complete.
Their hands drift from each other’s and to the hilts of their rapiers as they get closer to the mill, clutching the metal twists like lifelines as they enter.
Beyond that, Lucy remembers emotion only. The haste that numbed her hands and feet as she ran to beg Jacobs to pull back, the bile that rose in her throat as her stomach dropped when he refused. The futility as she fumbled for her blade back in the mill, the panic when she cradled Norrie to her chest. Norrie’s braids a mess, little strands of hair slicing against the skin of Lucy’s throat as she screamed for help. The weight of Norrie’s body in her arms, something she had become so accustomed to, something she had come to love, suddenly a brick that dragged her down and down and down and if this was what living meant, then please, God, anyone, let her go. She had promised she would be there when it was time.
four (the attic)
“I’m gonna go get ready for tonight’s job,” Lucy says, setting her sketchbook on the coffee table.
Lockwood looks up from his book and glances at the clock on the mantle. “Already? We’ve got a few hours before we need to leave.”
“Yeah, I need to…” She gestures vaguely at her head. There’s no good way to say “I’m 16 and I’ve never done my own hair for work,” not that he’d understand having to do one’s hair at all. It’s her first job in London, and if it takes her the next four hours, so be it – this is going to be perfect from now until they’re home safe again.
He shrugs. “See you later, then. Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will. Thank you.”
With a little smile, he turns back to the novel in his lap, and she turns to go up the stairs.
It doesn’t take her long to figure out that she’s not going to be able to do this. The braids keep unravelling or slipping out of the twist, the pins slide out and clatter on the floor, and besides, every time she gets close to completing it, her eyes smart and her throat burns and suddenly the whole affair looks lopsided and silly and she has to start over.
She was never supposed to be here like this, alone in a loft in a circle of bobby pins. It was supposed to be an apartment together, too small but so cosy and all theirs. She’s not even sure she’s an entire person now, like she forgot a couple limbs up north in her haste to pack.
All at once, everything feels like too much – her clothes too thick, her skin too thin, her hair too heavy. If being herself feels somehow incomplete and more than enough, maybe she can become someone new. There’s a pair of scissors on the bed (they had been stashed in the nightstand for God knows what reason) and a newspaper she had packed when she left. She spreads the paper on the bathroom floor and ties her hair back – her mother had done this to Mary once, had sheared her hair into a jagged pixie as punishment for being caught out with some boy. Sightlessly, Lucy closes the scissors around the ponytail, taking pleasure in the quick snick sound of the blades. It’s like the sound of rapiers against each other, but smaller, trimming away the little ghosts she carried with her to London. The ponytail falls to the ground with a thwump, and a new girl stares back at Lucy from the mirror. Now just brushing her shoulders, her hair shrinks up in a loose wave. It used to look like this after she and Norrie played pretend, curls fallen through giggling and dancing.
Somehow, though, that memory doesn’t hurt as much. Lucy doesn’t know this now, and she never will – not formally, though it’ll weave its way into her life until one day she’ll notice that looking back is fond rather than fraught – but it’s not about leaving who she was behind completely. It’s about growing into someone new, and cradling that girl’s wants and anguish and triumph in her chest as she makes space for new ones. Making space, as she’ll realise, for new love, guided by the ones that she had lost.