Lucie knew that she wasn't the first child in the world to suffer from PTSD, but she was pretty certain that she was the first child to ever suffer such a severe case of it. She had been chained to a chair in some mysterious man's basement. She had remained within his torture dungeon for over a year, her only contact with other humans coming from daily beatings that were meant to push her to the brink of death, but not a single inch beyond. It was a miracle she managed to escape at all. It was sheer dumb luck that her tormentor had failed to lock her in securely one night. It allowed Lucie the perfect chance to escape and she took it. Despite the agony she was in and despite how hard it was for her to walk, let alone run, Lucie still took the first chance she had to flee and she didn't look back, not even once.
Now here she stood, one year later, in an orphanage because she had no family to return to. This orphanage wasn't exactly a sanctuary either, though. Because no evidence was ever found of Lucie's torment, her captors having successfully cleaned up all the evidence, Lucie was deemed mentally ill and most of her claims were ignored. Even though she had limped up to the orphanage's door step, missing chunks of her body, bones sticking out through filthy and rotting skin, nobody believed the true extent of her tortures. Instead, they wrote her off as a runaway from an abusive home and took her in, despite her begging for them to understand that this was no mere child abuse case. This had been an elegant, refined, and coordinated process that several other victims were also enduring. But nobody believed her. They said these monsters that she saw were only her innocent mind's way of coping. If only it had been that simple…
"You just need to let go, Lucie!" one of the orphanage workers implored the child. "I know how hard it must be for you, but none of that stuff ever happened. It was all only in your head and you can be free from it if you just let go!" he continued to kneel before Lucie as she stomped her little feet and continued to insist that every torture she ever endured had been entirely real.
"It wasn't a dream! It wasn't!" she screamed. "And the monsters are real! Why won't you believe me?! How can you expect me to just let go?!" she burst into angry tears and the worker she was talking to only watched her run away, sorrow written upon his face. Poor kid. Her parents must've been really messed up to traumatize her so much that she was fantasizing about torture holes. But there was no way her story was true! There was no way such a horrific operation of that scale be going on without at least someone leaving some kind of evidence behind, right? Right?
Lucie didn't stop crying until her best and only friend, Anna, crawled into her bed later that night.
"Another rough day?" the child asked her friend. Lucie nodded dejectedly. In a flash, Anna's arms were wrapped tightly around Lucie. Lucie would never be able to understand how Anna could be so kind, especially to someone as insane and broken as her, but she didn't question it. Instead, she allowed it to happen and she basked in Anna's endless love and support.
Years later, Lucie had only learned to love Anna all the more. Never once, in all of their 15 years together, did ever Anna falter in her love and support for Lucie, even when times got hard. What's more, if anything, Anna only got kinder and gentler as the years passed. She was able to balance her own life with Lucie, finally moving out of the orphanage into her own place while also never forgetting Lucie. She was Lucie's hero because of that and Lucie believed that if anybody deserved to be queen of the world, it was Anna. Anna was too good for this sinful Earth. She was also especially too good for the scummy orphanage that she and Lucie called home. But since fate couldn't be changed, the girls made do with what they had. Besides, when they were with each other, they found that they didn't need much else.
"They told me I had to let go of all my past in therapy," Lucie said to Anna one day when they were in their mid-teens. "But I don't think I want to," she paused to look into Anna's eyes. "I think that you are someone worth holding on for…"
"Why do you act like I'm a saint?" Anna asked, looking away with a blush. "You save me from my monsters too. I need you too," she insisted. Perhaps her demons were not as volatile as Lucie's, but Lucie had genuinely saved her life several times before, finally giving her the love her own family had denied her. It was why she was at an orphanage. Unlike Lucie, she did have living parents. It was just that neither of them wanted her… But Lucie wanted her. Lucie made her feel like she mattered.
"You're worth holding on for too," she said and Lucie tilted her head, giving the girl a very rare smile before kissing her gently. Anna kissed back.
But sadly, this happiness didn't last. Though the girls had managed a good 15 years of deep friendship, even dipping into romance, it finally went downhill and Lucie began to slip away into madness once again. Without even meaning to, Lucie began to let go, but not in the way her therapist had hoped she might... Somehow, Lucie managed to find the family that had tortured her so heinously as a child and she didn't need any more incentive than that to go out hunting them, already planning her revenge. Armed with only an address and a shotgun, the young woman found the guilty home and did not waste a single second exacting her bloody retribution. Without pity, she killed them all out of vengeance.
She shot the father, then the mother, then the teenage son, then the little daughter who couldn't have been any older than Lucie had when she was stuck in the torture dungeon below. It made Lucie sick to see her. How could this family have raised a little girl right after tearing another one down 15 years ago? Lucie regretted having to kill her, she really did, but it simply had to be done! Lucie had to end the entire family, and no one could be afforded to live, even a child. Besides, what would this child have left to look forward to now that Lucie had slaughtered the rest of her family? The way Lucie saw it, shooting that little girl was a mercy kill. It prevented her from ever having to live a life alone in an orphanage and it prevented her from ever following in her parents' path and becoming a serial torturer and killer as well.
But once the darkness of her deed finally sunk in, Lucie did the first thing she could think of: she called Anna. Anna came right away, but didn't get there in time to save the family or protect Lucie from another one of her vicious hallucinations of a hungry monster coming to tear her to pieces with its long and twisted claws and sharp, bloody teeth. Instead, Anna literally ran into Lucie on the way to the house, both of them colliding and falling to the ground. The moment they sat up, Anna was met with wild eyes and a bloody face. Anna knew at once that Lucie had done something terrible, but the love she felt for the frightened woman overrode her terror and, by sheer instinct alone, she tended to Lucie's wounds right then and there, using her own clothes to patch Lucie up.
"Stay here," Anna ordered softly, kissing Lucie's cheek as she finished wrapping the trembling and bloody girl in her jacket. Lucie only nodded, trying hard not to faint from the ordeal she'd just suffered. She was shaking violently and hyperventilating, but she breathed in Anna's scent and managed to calm down. Just for a moment, everything was ok again. She smiled. The mere feeling of her friend's warm and comforting presence was enough to remind her to hold on just a little bit longer… At last, then, she even felt strong enough to go back inside that god-forsaken house and follow after Anna. Just for one second, Anna had brought her back from the brink.
But going inside hadn't been as good an idea as Lucie had planned. Anna was horrified, to say the least, when she saw all the carnage that Lucie had caused. Seeing all the blood and gore splattered across the wall, seeing all the chunks of body parts bathing in their own blood and seeing all the corpses and death made Anna ill. As she walked from room to room, finding a new dead family member in each, Anna finally threw up. But when Lucie came in, that lost and broken look in her eyes, Anna managed to hold on just long enough to help Lucie bury all the bodies.
Lucie wanted to be grateful, but seeing their faces again as she buried them opened something in her that should've been left shut. Her grip on reality was slipping and, without even meaning to, she had started to let go again. All through the rest of the day, while burying the bodies and cleaning up the house, Lucie's hallucinations kept coming back. They attacked with an increasing amount of cruelty until Lucie fell far enough to turn on Anna, nearly murdering the girl with a hammer in her blind fury. Lucie was able to come back right before she might've crushed Anna's head under the hammer, but all it took was one look for both of them to know that something in Lucie had finally broken and it would not be fixed.
Lucie ran to the bathroom at once, shutting and locking the door. Maybe she didn't regret killing the family that much, but almost killing Anna? Lucie couldn't even bear to look at her own bloody hands, let alone her face. She smashed the bathroom mirror in her own self-loathing, Anna's terrified and betrayed expression burned into her mind deeper than any firebrand. She beat herself and moaned. How could she have done this? And to the only person in the entire world that she had ever truly loved?
Anna spent the rest of that day trying to get Lucie to come out, but Lucie refused. Anna was too good for her. Anna shouldn't be forced to put up with her. Anna should run while she still had the chance. She should leave Lucie alone to die with her demons. But the moment Lucie had this thought, her demon appeared in the shattered glass of the mirror. It seemed to leap right out of nowhere and tackle her to the ground. Lucie let out a blood-curdling screech at the exact same time that the demon did and both of them quickly flew out of the bathroom, one in hot pursuit of the other. But it was during this last battle with the demon that Lucie came to a heartbreaking revelation. It was over. She finally realized what this monster was, and what it truly meant. But worst of all, she realized that it would never, ever truly leave her. For as long as she would live, this monster would live on as well, and nothing in all the world could stop it. Except...
Lucie let go one last time. She let go of life. She ran out of the house, ignoring Anna's frantic cries, and she slit her own throat on a shard of glass she had salvaged from the shattered mirror in the bathroom. As the blood gushed down her burning neck, Lucie managed to meet Anna's eyes one last time. Though a good 30 feet still separated them and though it was raining up a storm, Lucie could still see tears shining in Anna's eyes as Anna ran to save her. Lucie watched her come closer, knowing that Anna would still fail in the end. Lucie had hit her jugular. The rain and the blood were drenching through her clothing. She could still hear Anna screaming and sobbing her name.
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I had to do this. I promise that I love you. I really do. But I just can't do it anymore. This isn't your fault, and please don't ever think that it is. It's mine. I just can't do it anymore. But I still love you, I really do. And I am sorry, so sorry, so, so sorry that I'm giving up on you. Please forgive me. I just have to let go.
Lucie felt her body begin to collapse under its own weight as her muscles failed to support her anymore. She was dead before she hit the grass, though she was still able to hear Anna scream her name one last time before the whole world went from red to black.
AN: Just a Martyrs fic from Lucie's perspective about her inner turmoil and the concept that she had been swinging back and forth from holding on and living to letting go and dying.
This is a bit more blatant Anna X Lucie but I still don't know if I'd classify as a romance because I feel that Lucie was far too mentally unstable to have a healthy romantic relationship with Anna. Like, she literally would be unable to engage in one because her monsters occupied her mind so much that there was no room in there for the commitment required in a romantic relationship. I do believe, though, that Lucie wanted a relationship with Anna, she just wasn't emotionally ready for one.