Chapter Text
Lucy Carlyle was never one to be considered idle. A bit lazy (as her mother was all too quick to point out) maybe, but never idle. She was always doing something. Usually drawing in her sketchpad or practicing her rapier-work on Floating Joe and Esmeralda in the basement. Unfortunately, neither of those were cutting it anymore.
After taking a nasty fall fighting a particularly aggravated Phantasm, she managed to fracture a bone in her ankle. The doctors said that it was a lateral malleolus fracture. Lucy responded with ‘Gesundheit’. George tried to explain further by drawing a diagram on the Thinking Cloth, but all Lucy knew was that her ankle hurt and it was going to take longer than she wanted to heal. Doctor’s orders detailed a minimum of six weeks out of the field with a recommendation to stay off of it as much as possible. Seeing as it was the middle of winter, Lockwood&Co. was booked and busy and despite Lucy’s best attempts at convincing him otherwise, Lockwood refused to budge in following the doctor’s word to the letter.
“Lockwood, I promise I am fine enough to go tonight. It’s only a shade and I can sit and Listen from inside an iron circle. It’ll be perfectly alright.”
“Luce, you heard what the doctor said. If you put too much strain on your ankle, you could make it worse and keep yourself out of the field for even longer which is the last thing any of us want. Like you said, it’s only a shade. George and I will be just fine on our own.”
Lucy gave an indignant huff and rolled her eyes, then grabbed her crutch and hobbled to the living room. The stairs up to her attic were just a bit too much to manage with her ankle, so she’d been sleeping on one of the couches in the living room. While they were comfortable enough for a nap here and there, they were not meant to be slept on regularly. It had been a week already and Lucy felt as though she was going mental. She’d already gotten caught up on all her paperwork, sketched the living room and entry hall from three different perspectives, read one of Lockwood’s mystery novels, and tried (and failed) to do some rapier practice. It turns out footwork is quite important for that and quite difficult to do with a crutch. She flopped on the couch not unlike a toddler in a strop and let her crutch fall to the floor.
“Well someone’s acting mature today.” The skull decided to make its presence known. It was currently sat on the coffee table making grotesque faces at anyone who was unfortunate enough to look.
“Shut it, you.” Lucy leveled a glare at its eyes which were currently above and below its mouth.
“Oh come off it Lucy, I know you’re getting restless, but I’m only trying to help.” Lockwood picked that precise moment to follow into the living room.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she gestured toward the skull. “I know you’re just trying to help, but it feels like I’ve done everything there is to do. How can there be five more weeks of this?” This being sitting in the living room, twiddling her thumbs and talking to an evil skull who’s idea of a good time was the death of her and her friends.
“Well that’s it then!” Lockwood flashed her a megawatt grin and dashed off upstairs.
“Is he ever going to learn to explain himself before he just dashes off, or will he always just act like an overexcited puppy? Don’t tell me, next we’ll need to house train him.”
Lucy just shrugged at the skull, not deigning to respond. A minute later, Lockwood returned with a ball of yarn, a stick with a hook on one end, and a book.
“Here! My mother used to crochet to pass the time, maybe it’ll help keep your mind busy while you’re not very mobile!” He held the items out to her expectantly and grinned. The skull barked like an excited puppy, mocking him. Lucy wasn’t sure how to feel about this new activity, but he looked so confident that it would solve everything, she simply couldn’t say no. Hesitantly, she took the yarn, the book, and the hook.
“What am I even supposed to do with this? Tie it in knots?” Lucy truly didn’t have much scope of reference for arts and crafts. Her mother, nor her sisters had ever had time for them, deeming them frivolous.
Lockwood pointed to the book, it was some sort of manual. “It’s all in here, you see. It tells you how to hold the hook and the yarn and how to do all the different stitches, and once you get ahold of all that, there's patterns to follow to make things you can use!”
Lucy had to concede that it did seem like the sort of thing she may enjoy, should she ever get the hang of it. Though, flipping through the manual, it looked simple enough.
“Thank you Lockwood. I’ll give it a try, but if it’s as boring as everything else is, I'm coming on that Stone-Knocker case tomorrow night.”
“Nice try, but I’ve got plenty more hobbies for you to try before it comes to that. You will let your leg heal because I refuse to go longer than I have to without my Listener.”
“Fine. But I make no promises with this crochet stuff.”
“You’ll be great, Luce. You have my full faith that you will figure it out in no time, you always do.”
A blush crept to her cheeks, as it always seems to do when Lockwood compliments her. “That’s not true, remember when you were trying to teach me the Kuraishi Turn? It took ages.”
“Maybe if you had spent less time falling over, you would have learned it faster.”
“Oh please, you’re just jealous because you don’t have limbs with which to fence.” Lucy leveled a glare at the skull once more.
Lockwood gave a curious look, but these one-off conversations with the skull were becoming more and more common. “While they may sound similar, the Kuraishi Turn and crochet are very different. You mastered the turn, now it’s time for you to master this! Now, it’s about 4:30, so I’ve got to go meet George at the client’s house. There’s leftover Thai food and donuts from Arif’s in the kitchen and the phone number is in the casefile if you absolutely need anything.” And with that, he grabbed his rapier, kit, and chains, and walked out the front door.
“Let me know when you get really desperate, I can tell you how to tie a noose with all that string. It might be a little flimsy though, but with enough determination it should go smoothly enough.”
“I don’t need a noose you psychopath!” With that, she closed the vent at the top to get some peace and quiet from the skull.
Lucy stared at the beginner’s crochet manual, willing the knowledge it contained into her mind. While she wasn’t quite confident that it would be the fix that Lockwood thought it would be, she still wanted it to work. She opened the book to the first page and the first step was how to hold the hook. There were a few different options, but she opted to hold it in her dominant hand like a knife. Next was how to hold the yarn. The diagram showed it wrapped around the pinky finger, under the ring and middle fingers, then over the index finger. It took her a few tries and she thoroughly felt tangled up in string but she figured it out eventually. The last step before trying any of the actual stitches was making a slip knot (which Lucy already knew how to do) and creating the base chains. It too took a few tries before she figured out the best way to maneuver the hook to make the loops and chain them together, but before she knew it, she had a length of chains as long as her arm. Looking at them closer, it made sense why they were called chains. They looked just like the iron chains she used on just about every case, just smaller and softer. And slightly less effective in protecting one from ghosts. The first pattern in the book was for a scarf. It seemed simple enough, just rows upon rows of double crochet stitches with some fringe on the ends.
Turns out, it was harder than it looked. Lucy chained the amount it said and managed one row of stitches before she got stuck and frustrated and undid it all the first time. It wasn’t very clear where to put the hook to do the next row of stitches. After doing and undoing it again a few times she decided to put the hook where she thought was correct and just make sure to do it the same each time. If she was going to be wrong, she’d at least be wrong confidently. She continued like this for a few rows, but her scarf started to look a bit funky. One end was a lot wider than the other, despite having the same number of stitches (she counted and she made the skull count, just to be sure) and the sides looked a bit like if someone tried to draw a straight line while blindfolded. So, not at all straight.
At this point, it was long past time for dinner so Lucy disentangled herself from the yarn ball and made her way to the kitchen. She didn’t take the crutch with her, which she realized was a poor decision about halfway to the kitchen. Her leg twinged from her ankle up to her knee each time she shifted her weight. She got the Thai food from the fridge and sat down at the table to eat it cold. It tasted better that way anyway. Nevermind the fact that her leg was hurting too much to wait the time it would take to heat it up.
Lucy looked at the clock. It was already half past one. She couldn’t believe how long she’d been trying to figure out how to loop string through other loops of string. It was then that the front door of 35 Portland Row opened to Lockwood and George trying to sneak in quietly in case Lucy had been asleep on the couch. She wasn’t of course. Where they expected her to be, there was a mess of yarn and the start of a wonky scarf.
“Luce, we’re back!”
“In the kitchen!”
George and Lockwood dropped their kits in the entry hall to be dealt with later and made their way toward the kitchen. Upon entering, George pulled a face. “Are you eating cold Thai food?”
“Yes. It tastes better this way.”
“Does it taste better or did you leave your crutch in the living room and your ankle hurt too much to walk to the microwave?”
“It tastes better.” Lucy was a terrible liar.
At that, Lockwood wordlessly grabbed her plate and popped it into the microwave on his way to put the kettle on for tea. “Luce, how is crocheting going?”
“Crocheting? I thought it was supposed to be a mess of string.” George said flatly.
Lucy fixed him with a glare. “It’s going fine. The sides are wonky and it seems to have shrunk the further I get. The picture in the book doesn’t do that, but maybe mine is just special.”
Lockwood grabbed a donut and said between bites, “It sounds like your tension is too tight and make sure not to count the chain as a stitch unless it says so in the pattern.”
“Since when are you a crochet expert?”
Lockwood shrugged and grabbed Lucy’s Thai food from the microwave. Upon depositing the plate in front of her, he gave her a smile which he only used when he knew he was being a bit arrogant. “I am an expert on everything, thank you very much.”
George snorted and Lucy rolled her eyes. They sat in comfortable silence for a bit while they ate and drank tea.
“How did the case go, by the way.”
“It was alright, fairly simple. The shade was the client’s great-grandmother. Funnily enough, the Source was her favorite crochet hook that had been lost in the back of an old storage closet. Who knows maybe she came back because she had too many unfinished crochet projects.”
That made Lucy shudder. What if her ankle never healed right and she became an old lady so obsessed with yarn that when she died she came back attached to the yarn.
“Don’t worry Luce, I’ll show you how to do it properly tomorrow. For now, I think we could all use some well-deserved R&R.” Lockwood flashed her a grin. Not quite the megawatt one, but almost.
“Maybe you two will, I’ll be stuck here on this stupid couch,” Lucy huffed.
Lockwood and George turned to each other and had a silent conversation. Is this how they felt when Lucy talked to the skull? When she did that, they could at least hear half of it.
Lockwood turned back to her, “If you promise to wait for us to help you back down in the morning, we’ll help you up to the attic tonight so you can sleep in your own bed, but only if you promise. You had a hard time going from the living room to the kitchen which is roughly twenty steps, you’re not going to make it up or down two flights of stairs.”
Lucy’s eyes narrowed. On one hand, she hated the fact that she would be troubling them to help get her up and down the stairs, but on the other hand her bed sounded so heavenly.
“Fine, but you have to let me go on the Stone-Knocker case tomorrow night.”
“Not a chance, nice try though.”
With that, Lockwood went around the table and helped her up, supporting her weight on her bad side. The stairway was only wide enough for two people so while Lucy and Lockwood slowly made their way up, George followed with a small plate of biscuits and a mug of tea. Once they made it to the attic, Lockwood deposited Lucy on her bed, grabbed a t-shirt and fleece pants from her dresser for her, and George set the tea and biscuits on her bedside table. They both bid her good night. She changed into pyjamas, ate a biscuit, drank some tea, and went to bed reflecting on how grateful she was for the home she’d found in 35 Portland Row and in those who resided in its walls.