~vessel of brightness, come make me blind~
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Lydia Noelle was a violin virtuoso. A friend of Lucy's from a few tours in the past, though she neglected to tell her about the massive venue upgrade whenever she did enlist her help to fill in some of th...
Going to switch things up a bit and do this in 1st person :)
If you've read my fics before y'all know the drill! Picture of the person above = the pov the chapter will primarily be in unless otherwise stated (unless of course I'm writing in third person which I'm slowly starting to realize is harder for me 😬).
TW: This chapter contains brief discussions and depictions of anxiety and trauma.
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The Ripped Bodice Philedelphia, PA 3-1-23
"Why didn't you fucking tell me she got into a car accident whenever she ran away, Luc?" I didn't entirely know why I was upset, or mad even. It's not like she owed me any explanation or I had any right to know. Still the confirmation years later from Lydia herself stung a bit. As stupid as it sounded.
Lucy was already on me the second I knelt in front of the slowly emptying box, whipping around to face me with eyebrows sliding together in a glare. "Oh, like you were owed any sort of explanation after that shit you pulled four years ago?"
"Four fucking years ago, Lucy!"
"And as you can see that was definitely plenty of time for her to forgive you?" Lucy shot back, colder and louder than I had heard her speak to anyone in a while. Whenever she cleared her throat to speak again I almost jumped, fearing what she had to say more than anything. Because as much as I wanted to scream and cry and tell her to back off and mind her business I knew I couldn't. And the next thing she said only emphasized that fact. "Julien, you weren't there. After you left and the years after that. I was already halfway to Pennsylvania by the time she finally called me and I don't know what she would've done if I wouldn't have answered the phone. You weren't there. You didn't see how bad it got because whenever I tell you that that fucking car accident was just the tip of the iceberg."
It felt like all of the air was being sucked from my lungs. Because I knew as much as Lydia denied it so much of it was my fault. It was as simple as the butterfly effect. One spiral only lead to a bigger one and then an even bigger one and so on. Until she was probably laid out on a highway somewhere spurting blood from an artery. God it was my fault.
"Look," Lucy's voice sounded gentler as she spoke up again, placing her hands on my shoulders causing my muscles to tense. Which is something they never did whenever it came to Lucy. But I had a feeling that whenever it came down to Lydia she wouldn't hesitate to knock me right down to the depths. "I know you weren't in any place to be with someone, o-or even probably comfort someone-"
"I still could've done it better, I didn't have to leave her there." I hadn't even noticed I was crying until my vision blurred, a sob catching in my words as I squeezed my hands up into tight balls. "I- I was scared and- I just thought if I stayed with her I was just going to break her. I- I thought I was protecting her by walking away, I actually thought I was protecting her."
