the blood in our future

A Dark Shade of Red

A/N: Let's have some fun!!

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Lucy Carlyle felt a breeze whip around her nose and play with her hair. It was a warm summer evening, and the cool air was welcome on her skin.

She was standing in a large, neatly kept garden, and with amusement, she realised there was some kind of party going on around her. A gracious one, by all accounts, for there was no beer in sight, but only expensive-looking cocktails in high glasses. Apart from her, there were not a lot of younger people in sight, either.

Yet, despite the realness of it all, despite the soft rustling of leaves filling her ears, Lucy knew almost immediately that she was dreaming.

It were the little things that gave it away: The grass was a bit too green, the faces of the people walking past her a bit too distorted, their laughs a bit too loud. Also, Lucy couldn't possibly fathom how she could've gone from going to sleep in her hospital bed to suddenly wearing a pretty blue dress to a fancy garden party.

At the same time as she realised that she was sleeping, Lucy also understood that she had no control over her own actions in this dream. Now that she'd seen through the fabrics of this reality, her body was moving on its own accord: Her hand rising up to fix her hair without her having asked it to, her eyes straining to follow the birds in the trees when she'd rather investigated the exact colour of the grass.

It was as if she was stuck in the memory of a moment that had already happened, and, thereby, had become unchangeable. It was as if she was acting out a script she was unable to stray from.

But she didn't mind it much. It was a nice dream, and she was in no rush to leave.

"Lucy!" A voice called out to her, and something about it sounded painfully familiar to her.

She turned around only to find the boy from the hospital walking towards her, wind tousling his dark hair.

What was his name again?

Lockwood, she thought she remembered.

He hadn't stayed for long after he'd introduced himself. Or, rather: After Mary had introduced him in his stead as he'd seemed too lost for words to do it himself.

Lucy knew, of course, that she'd lost her memory. That she'd lost about a year of her life. Mary and that bespectacled boy, George, had told her right after she'd woken up. When she had been unable to recall how going to a last-chance job interview in Marylebone had ended up with her waking up in Newcastle's hospital. When knocking on the front door of Thirty-five Portland Row, hope and hunger churning in her stomach, was the last thing she remembered.

But however much this loss had struck her, Lockwood had seemed to take it worse, still. His eyes had stayed on the ground, unblinkingly, the entire time Mary had introduced him.

Anthony Lockwood. Her boss, associate, landlord, and friend, Mary had told her, and she'd thought that those were an awful lot of roles for someone whose shoulders looked so heavy already.

Halfway through Mary and George's (associate and friend, if she trusted her sister's words) explanation of how she'd come to work for them, Lockwood had suddenly risen with a mumbled excuse and practically fled her room, never to return.

Boss, associate, landlord, and friend.

Mary had hesitated before she'd added "friend" as the last descriptive word, and Lucy guessed him running away and not bothering to come back somehow fit in there. After all, she knew only too well that employers took the friendly route only for as long as it brought them benefits, for as long as it kept their workers calm and loyal. But what good was she now with a whole year of experience wiped from her mind?