the bones of our past - Lockwood x Lucy

Welcome Home

It hit her as soon as she stepped off the train. She really was here again; back in the same place she had hated all those years. The air still smelled the same, and the earth beneath her shoes was as familiar as her own breathing.

"Lovely," George commented behind her with an air of irony, and Lucy couldn't agree more.

The sky was dark and cloudy. The train station itself looked as if it could collapse into itself any minute. At least, the part that was even left of it. There wasn't much but a roof and four crooked walls anyways. Behind it lay her home town, stretched out across the plains.

Home sweet home.

It was only now that she had London to compare it to that she noticed just how drained of colour the town was. Not even the grass between her boots seemed to be green.

"Looks cosy," Lockwood said, but Lucy knew that he was just practising positivity.

She threw him a thankful glance nonetheless. "I'm sure it won't be too cosy after nightfall. Come on, the hotel's this way."

On the train, they had already discussed their next few steps: They would check into a hotel first to establish some kind of base. Then, Lockwood and Lucy would drop off George at the town's library before going to the Carlyle family home to talk to Mary. The letter, for all its details, hadn't mentioned when exactly her sister would be forced to fight this haunting, and even the most rudimentary research would help them in case they had to roll out tonight already. Afterwards, the two of them would pick up George again, get some equipment from their room and observe the apparition from afar.

If all went well, that is.

Something entered Lucy's mind then, and she could have slapped herself for not noticing earlier.

"By the way, guys," she said softly, "no one here must know we're actually an agency."

"Think they'd feel threatened?" Lockwood asked, but Lucy shook her head.

"Well, that too, maybe, but there's something worse. If Jacobs really is still operating the agency here, then that means that he also knows about me not actually having my fourth degree from him-"

"And he could implicate us for faking it willingly," Lockwood ended, eyes drifting off into the distance shortly. "Alright, so no one can know who we are. It complicates things, surely, but it's nothing we can't handle."

"The great Anthony Lockwood okay with no one knowing who we are? Gosh, I never thought I'd live to see the day," George quipped with a smile aimed at Lucy. "By the way, Lucy, do you think that this is it already?"

"That what is it?"

"The street we're walking on. Do you think this is where it happens? Where the 'Wall of Death' appears?"

Lucy stood still for a moment, shutting out the outside world to concentrate on any sounds that, under normal circumstances, shouldn't be there. But everything was still. She couldn't hear anything. Carefully, she crouched down and closed her eyes before she let her fingers touch the road.

There it was, tiny, hiding. At the surface, it wasn't much, but underneath she could feel this... vastness. It was like swimming in a coral reef and going a bit too far. That feeling when the ground falls away beneath you, and suddenly, there is only darkness below, a bottomless chasm waiting to swallow you whole.

"It doesn't feel good," Lucy said as she stood up again. "I can tell that there's something here, but I can't make out anything specific."

"It's also still daylight," Lockwood argued. "I'm sure we'll see and hear more once it's dark."