Work Text:
The last time Jack visited before Oswald became Glen Baskerville, they all sat on the roof of the Baskerville’s main building and looked at the stars. It was a rather hopeless endeavor—the light pollution of the city made it so that the sky had a gold-purple overlay even at night, marking the inky, deep blue with an alien color and blocking out most of the stars, but Lacie kept her gaze fixed on them even as the cold burned through the roof and past her clothing to chill her skin, because she knew that if she looked away, she would find her brother and Jack both watching her instead of the stars, and Lacie did not like to think about why she was a preferable sight to the night sky.
Jack watching her was usual, expected. As long as they’d been friends, his favorite game had been pretending he only had eyes for Lacie, even though all three of them knew he couldn’t have cared less about anyone or anything other than, perhaps, preserving his own life. But Oswald watching her—
Lacie had felt her brother’s gaze linger, sometimes, in the past, but he would always jerk it away as soon as he noticed he was watching her. She knew that he tried to draw a line between them, to close himself off before her oncoming death so that it would hurt less. Five days, Levi had told her this morning, with the sort of grin that didn’t invite any questions; Oswald had said nothing, but Lacie knew he had to have known longer than she had.
He’d given up, she decided. Her wonderful, brilliant, kind older brother had given up—he’d given up on not being hurt by her death, he’d given up on pretending to himself or anyone else that he wouldn’t miss her. It hurt, that giving up—it hurt like hell, because now neither of them could pretend that they would be okay, this time next week. Oswald’s line had become a comfort to Lacie, too, once she was old enough to understand it, old enough to realize that her Nii-sama was ignoring her because he was scared of losing her, and not because he hated her now. Now that it was gone, Lacie could feel the precipice she was dangling on more clearly, could sense the terror and pain of the fall. One more protection stripped away; one moment closer to her death.
Lacie kept her eyes on the stars. They had been far more visible, when she and Oswald were younger. They hadn’t lived in the city then—cities were dangerous, when one of you had the red eyes of a Child of Ill Omen—and, out in the country where there were far less lights, the stars had come closer to rivalling the Abyss. They hadn’t been any comparison, of course, but—
They had been lovely. These stars were lovely too, of course, but their loveliness had been blocked out by the lights of the city, of people uncaring of what their slight conveniences stole away. Lacie did not begrudge them this—hurting others to make things easier for yourself was something she was quite familiar with. After all, it was the reason she had to die.
She had told Oswald the truth, this morning before Jack had come over and Lacie had learned how long she had left. He had suggested that she get Jack to help her escape, and she had told him that that would bring the wrath of the Jury down on him, that there was no reason she had to die other than greed, that he could take that greed and use it to elevate himself. He had looked at her like the very earth had crumbled out beneath him, so she’d told him that she was pregnant by Levi and would die pregnant, just to see what would happen, and his face had gone very white and he’d left the room, and when Levi had come in later to tell her that she had five days left to live, he’d had a black eye.
And the wind was cold, and the stars, though somewhat obscured, were there, and Oswald’s gaze had not left Lacie once, and Lacie had plausible deniability, here—she was pregnant, and she was cold, and she was going to die in a few days, and so she leaned against her brother’s warm arm, and kept her eyes on the stars, and pretended that she was not upset that she would die.