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It starts with a major clash, of words too sharp and a voice too quiet to combat them.
Louisa knows she is painfully meek, especially for her age. It’s a constant reminder. She catches her reflection when passing by windows and sees how hunched over she walks, she sits at meetings and stares at the space in between herself and the table because of how hard she hugs her arms, as if she’s trying to sink into the chair. Only when she is alone, locked away into a room and hidden from dagger-like eyes, does she find herself able to relax.
Of course, she doesn’t expect anyone to understand this. So when the new girl looks at her the same way—irritation in her eyes because Louisa won’t speak up, a sneer on her lips even when she does—Louisa isn’t surprised. She just retreats into herself further, keeping her gaze trained on the floor.
But as the weeks go by, Louisa realises that Lucy might be the only one who could understand her.
“Oi, Louisa,” Steinbeck calls one day, when they’re driving down Yokohama’s quiet roads together towards the airport. Twain sits in the passenger’s seat and Louisa is at the back, so she only manages to make eye contact with Steinbeck in the rearview mirror before darting her eyes away again. “Do you know where Lucy is?”
The name alone is enough to make Louisa’s heart splinter, but she doesn’t let it show.
“No,” she murmurs. “Not at all.”
She hasn’t seen Lucy since she escaped on her own. Louisa isn’t surprised, because the plans she drew up for the Guild to burn Yokohama to the ground—before they were interrupted, anyway—never ever included a guide to ensure Lucy’s loyalty. Her plans operate under the assumption that Lucy is on their side, even if she knows it might not always be the case.
(Would anything have changed, either way, if Louisa ensured Lucy’s arrest?)
“I see,” Steinbeck hums back. “I thought maybe she might have told you her plans before she left.”
Oh, why would Lucy do such a foolish thing? Louisa bites her tongue.
“I wonder if she’s alive,” Twain muses, hands resting behind his head. “This is a foreign country. I doubt she’d survive on her own.”
“Lucy’s smart,” Louisa pipes up before she can help herself. She jumps when Twain turns back to look at her, pinning her with an unnerving stare. “I-I mean, I think… I think she’ll be okay.”
“Not that it matters,” Steinbeck adds. “If she didn’t betray us, then I’d make it my first priority to find her. She was a major powerhouse of the Guild.”
Louisa’s fingers curl into the fabric of her skirt, and she doesn’t say anything for the rest of the ride.
Louisa knew from the very start that Lucy would never find home with the Guild.
Fitzgerald compared her to a wild beast forced into a cage when she first joined. He said that she could be tamed, that their incredible resources and the power that came from being his employee would defang Lucy. That she just needed to assimilate.
For some reason, he thought that Louisa was the best person to do so, when there really couldn’t have been a worst option compared to her.
Lucy was not afraid to fight head on. While Louisa would spend hours gathering up the courage to ask Lucy to join them for dinner or leave Anne’s room, Lucy would destroy it all in seconds with a harsh quip and sharp glare. Even when Louisa would try to reach to her heart, explain how the Guild saved her, and how it could save Lucy too—
“Not everyone is as dependent and weak as you, Louisa. Some of us are fine fighting for ourselves.”
It’s an argument that stuck with Louisa for as long as she can remember, because it made clear how different they are. Lucy says she’s okay with fighting for her whole life. But Louisa has been fighting her whole life—just to stand and let her vocal chords work, to keep her eyes open rather than closed in fear, is a battle enough every day. If this is the kind of pain that Lucy is willing to go through just to hold onto her beliefs, then how much does she really hate the Guild?
How much does she hate the idea of home?
Their relationship only takes a step when, to put it simply, Louisa almost dies.
They’re flying in a helicopter when they’re under attack, and Louisa’s Ability is ridiculously unsuited for combat, so she’s been hiding since the battle began. But there’s not much space in here, and while her teammates are fighting back, she’s panicking. The heights are bad enough without the vigorous shaking of the machine.
In her haste, she stumbles, feet slipping off the edge, and she feels the crushing weight of gravity dragging her down and down and down…
And in a flash, the height below her crumbles as she lands on black and white tiles, her heart pounding in her chest.
Louisa is still shaking when Lucy approaches her with her hands on her hips, a look of exasperation on her face. The first thing she says isn’t coated with sugar, and instead tastes like a bitter lemon squeezed, “I could’ve let you die, you know.”
She doesn’t meet Lucy’s eye, instead focused on looking at everything else around here. It looks like a child’s playroom, with toys scattered everywhere, and the lighting in here is ever-blinding. Louisa brings a trembling finger up to adjust her glasses before finally asking, “…Is this your Ability?”
“Yeah.” Lucy sits down next to her, leaning back on her palms. “We’ll just stay here ‘til the fight’s over. The rest can handle it.”
Louisa nods. And then, after a moment’s hesitation, adds, “It’s a nice room.”
Lucy’s huff is a little confused. “What even classifies as a nice room to you? Somewhere you can hide your skittish self and not talk to anyone for hours?”
She cannot help herself from taking the bait. “I-Isn’t that why you hide in here too? To avoid people?”
The silence grates on her ears. She ducks her head when Lucy takes too long to respond, mumbling, “Sorry.”
“No,” Lucy says, clipped and simple. “You’d be correct.”
Louisa looks up, surprised. She’s never heard Lucy’s voice so devoid of its antagonistic tone before.
Lucy is busy fiddling with the ends of her braids, so she’s not looking at Louisa. Louisa snatches this moment to watch her, to really look at Lucy for who she is. To see her without all the edge in her personality, quietly existing in the place where she can just be.
Ah. This must be why Lucy refuses to accept the Guild’s hand—she already has a home. She already knows where she really belongs.
And here she is, letting Louisa in. Sure, it’s because she wanted to save her, but she didn’t have to. And she could have let them out the moment they were on safe ground.
Louisa’s heart squeezes as she takes in this new feeling, and tucks it away when she realises that this won’t last.
It’s been a week since Louisa found Fitzgerald and started getting them both back on their feet.
The workload is heavy—double of what Louisa usually does in the Guild, because she is no longer just a strategist, but also Fitzgerald’s direct assistant. Not that she’s doing a particularly good job. She can write emails, but that’s about it. She’s still pretty bad at speaking to the other employees.
(In the back of her mind, she hears a voice scoff at her and call her a coward. She ignores her.)
Tonight, though, Louisa’s been given a break. She’s alone in her room, just a small one from the flat that Fitzgerald rented while they get their stocks up. The wooden desk she’s sitting at shakes when she rests her elbows on it, one leg too short, and moonlight seeps in from the window in front of it, casting blue shadows over the space.
Louisa stares at the sky, dark and twinkling, and lets her mind drift.
Now that they have Eyes of God, she could easily find out where Lucy is. It wouldn’t take more than a few clicks. She could see if she’s doing well or the opposite, see if she’s really found a new home for herself, away from the Guild. Away from Louisa.
But Louisa wouldn’t do that. Shyness aside, she doesn’t think she can bring herself to know. It’s easier to let herself wonder, to let her mind come up with hundreds of possibilities, instead of confronting the ache nestled deep in her heart when she thinks of vibrant red hair and defiant eyes.
(Coward, she hears again, and it echoes loudly in her head. It’s a little bit harder to ignore this time round.)