Chapter Text
She looked like a gypsy.
It had only increased with time.
From fourteen onwards, she was always the same.
Coriolanus remember how he had changed; hair that came and went, a body that went from being all bone to all muscle.
It took so much work, so much consistency; he could never falter in the work, he could never delay it.
Lucy stayed the same; always the same.
Coriolanus wondered if it was some inner strength in her, that the reason she had always stayed the same was because she was frightened by having to conform to another way.
He had never been able to understand her.
He knew he never could.
Coriolanus looked at the recent photographs he had of Lucy that had been taken for him.
She had dark red cheeks, windburnt by exposure. There was a cut on her chin, and gravel grazes across her arms, shoulders, and chest from an accident. All of her hair had been braided back into a mixture of thin and thick tails that fell down her back. The rows of plaited hair with lines of her silver scalp showing through reminded Coriolanus of plowed earth, bleak farmland. There were earrings made of brass, multiple rings hooked together until they reached her collarbones. She had a piercing through the septum of her nose, and scarring on one leg.
Coriolanus had laughed when he heard he had taken to carrying a stock-whip with her. She was known for beating people with it that did not behave at her concerts. Her travelling wagon had been robbed at one stage; Coriolanus had wanted to step in, but Lucy's fire and fury had been quicker. He found out that she discovered the identity of the robber, and put holes into the roof of his travelling wagon with a pick-axe whilst he slept with company inside of a brothel.
He wondered if she would tattoo herself, but he wondered again if she did not want to mark herself. She had enough scars that would stay with her until the day she died.All of her jewelry she could remove; the piercing holes would close over. They were not something of permanence.
There had been an outlay of money, but it was worth it.
He had film of her; he had recordings.
He slowly sipped a glass of cognac, watching the film projected onto the canvas screen flicker mildly, the grain of the tape.
She sat on the bar in what could be barely described as a restaurant, holding the baby of someone who was not clearly identified in the film.
"Wow, you're my little pumpkin pie!" Lucy beamed loving down at the baby, affected by the charm of little body. "My little chub..." She stroked the babies cheek, and touched the small swell of nose.
She wore a dark red dress with a neckline that was round and cut extremely low. Her breasts were small; there was nothing immense to her except her measures of love and anger. Coriolanus looked at the visibility, the vulnerability, of her deeply exposed collarbones, wrist joints, knuckles; the shift of the tendons in her throat, he could almost see the punch of her heartbeat pulsing to one side of her throat.
Coriolanus looked at the shadows across her chest, the proximity of ribs almost pushing through the surface of her decolletage. He could see a mark on her neck; it was not from somebody biting or kissing her.
He squinted.
It was a mark of dermatitis; a spot of irritation.
Relief, supremacy pulsed through.
Thank God.
Thank Lucy.
The baby squirmed a little in her lap; Coriolanus could see the baby was trying to get closer to her, rather than away from her.
"Now, little gentleman," Lucy addressed the baby. Everyone in the restaurant laughed. It was reasonably full, but not overwhelmed. "I can assure you in your correct assumption that I have no milk for you whatsoever, but I have a song for you."
Coriolanus simultaneously grimaced and smiled at the lightness of her voice, but the manner of the jest that she made. It was not completely vulgar for the naturalism of what it concerned, but it was not without vulgarity.
Lucy's hair was loose down her back, and uncommonly straight. He wondered what she had done to it to make it straight. She had two small sections of hair at the front plaited into a micro braid. Each line of hair hung in a straight line to her waist, sitting in identical grace over each cheekbone.
"Wise men say..." Lucy began to sing, to everybody's applause, and the baby's shocked gasp of content joy.
"Only fools rush in
But I cannot help
Fallin in love with you..."
Coriolanus laughed.
The way she pronounced "love" was instead "rove".
"Shall I stay..." Lucy continued, rocking her body gently from side to side, so she used her back as the cradle for the baby rather than her arms.
"Would it be a sin?"
No, it wouldn't, Coriolanus thought distantly.
"If I cannot help
Falling in love with you..."
The "r" sound was repeated again instead of "l".
Coriolanus was so moved that he thought of nothing else; it was impossible for even brain chatter to permeat through and bitter him.
"'Now, where is my kiss, pretty madam?' Is what my little bugger is questioning!" Lucy declared.
Oh, don't swear in front of the baby, Coriolanus thought, running a hand over his face in shame on behalf of Lucy. The glow never left his eyes.
Lucy lifted the baby into the air, with a mock groan of hardship, before kissing his cheek. Before the next kiss to his forehead, she lifted him up in the air, before bringing him down to her mouth again. This continued for his other cheek, his chin, his chest, and then a raspberry blown against his belly.
The baby shrieked with delight, and took hold of her plaited hair; each length in each of his small hands, dimpled where the knuckles would be years later.
"Ooh..." Lucy grinned. "Don't make me do my "Vissi D'Arte", sweetheart. You'll be hearing that aria until the day you die."
The baby pulled on her hair, with what seemed to be a considerable force despite the littleness of the human.
"Oh, Lucy, don't be such a bitch!" A woman's voice from within the crowd called. Coriolanus could not see who this woman was; the camera's eye never left Lucy. "You know for a bloody fact your voice goes sky high, you ain't destroying my lad's hearing when he doesn't even know what his willy is, yet!"
Everyone laughed. Lucy in particular cackled.
"I don't think he's seen it yet over this belly, look!" Lucy propped the baby in arm, with her braids still in his hands, and she pointed to his stomach.
The baby sneezed, and with a look of horror on his face, he burst into tears. He wrenched Lucy's braids to his face, and tilted in her arms so he could try and hide himself away in her chest.
Everyone cooed and chuckled and sung softly.
"Oh, honey, it's ok." Lucy stroked his head. "Just a sneeze, baby, no one is going to hurt you. No one has hurt you, love. Just the dust. My perfume. The dirt on the shoes, love."
The baby whimpered.
Coriolanus watched the distress on Lucy's face; visceral, maternal.
He could see clearly how she felt her own womb almost ache at the infant's confusion in her arms.
"Tell me how to make it better," Lucy whispered, kissing the baby's head. "Tell me how to make it better, love."
Coriolanus's hand rubbed slowly over his mouth.
The light of the projection illuminated him utterly grey.
The baby slowly quietened, and from what it seemed, the baby succumbed to tiredness.
Lucy continued to hold him in her arms.
"Ooo..." She harmonized softly.
"So we'll go no more
No more
Oooh...
So we'll go no more
a-roving..."
Fierce happiness returned once again. Arms were thrown into the air, drinks were raised, and people near the camera had their smiles captured eternally.
The film ended there.
Coriolanus never heard that song she was going to sing.