Quill Kipps had been elated right after he was promoted to division leader, but the more nights he spent at the DEPRAC headquarters, filling out entire books' worth of paperwork about miniscule details, the more he was starting to think it was an empty title. Sure the raise in pay had been nice, and at first he had been proud to oversee the supervisors of the small teams he used to lead, but he was getting the feeling that the promotion had been an empty gesture to appease the public.
He was starting to see that initiative was not appreciated within the Fittes agency. If they could have gotten away with it, they would have punished him and his team for teaming up with Lockwood and Co without a doubt, but the endeavour had put an end to the Chelsea Outbreak though, and the public would never have accepted a direct punishment.
Instead, he was stuck with administrative work which mostly included choosing which teams to send out to which haunting, recording their every move from their oral reports, and delivering these files to DEPRAC at Scotland Yard. He had spent entire nights in the building the past few weeks, barely doing anything besides pushing around paperwork and perhaps assigning Fittes teams to work with DEPRAC, and it was grating on him
It was during his second trip to the glass and steel Scotland Yard building of that night that Quill saw her. An overworked secretary in the command centre had directed him to the waiting room with a shake of her head. He had come by so often in the past few weeks that she knew him by name. In the waiting room he opened the silver coloured folder and leafed through the stack of files one last time, checking if he'd filled in everything while he waited for an inspector to take them off his hands.
The door opened, and Quill looked up to see a familiar figure march out. Lucy Carlyle was wearing her work gear – a mixed outfit of a dark green parka over a dark skirt and torn leggings, heavy duty leather boots and woollen fingerless gloves, which almost made her look like a burglar instead of an agent. Apparently Lockwood and Co still didn't have a proper uniform- and the battle scars of a case gone wrong. That was nothing out of the ordinary for an agent at DEPRAC headquarters at this time of the night.
What was odd though, was her posture. Quill knew Lucy as a proud girl, a strong presence with a confidence that seemed to have grown with leaps and bounds since he'd first met her in the national archives a year and a half ago. Now though, she looked small and fragile, and it was not only because of the bandage on her neck and the vibrant redness of her right cheek. Her head hung low, and she seemed to struggle not to hunch in on herself. She managed to keep her gate determined, but she may as well have been dragging her feet.
"I can hardly believe I'm saying this miss Carlyle, but your actions saved the team and possibly your client's house." Barnes told her, closing the door to the interview room behind them. Lucy turned to face him, and the fluorescent lighting highlighted the dark circles underneath her eyes.
"It was no big deal," she said, and it was only because Quill sat close by that he could make out what she said.
She was a pitiful picture of an agent. And apparently Barnes thought so too, because his eyes softened and he placed a large hand on her shoulder, well away from the bandage.
"If you hadn't acted the way you did, that supervisor might have accidentally killed Mr Goodwell, miss Carlyle. If I were you, I'd see if I could file a complaint with the head of Bunchurch."
Quill frowned at that. What had Lucy been doing with a Bunchurch team? She had made no secret of the fact that she enjoyed working at Lockwood and Co and wasn't planning to leave. And she didn't seem like a person who changed her mind easily. Then his eye fell on the bulbous rucksack she was carrying, and a memory flitted through his mind.
"I talk with ghosts. They talk to me"
Barnes bid Lucy farewell and turned to him with a long-suffering sigh, but Quill had already gotten up and approached him. He held out the folder for the inspector to take, glancing at Lucy's retreating form. Something had happened with her, and he was going to get to the bottom of it.
"It's all there," he told the DEPRAC inspector. "I trust I don't have to go through all the files with you, sir?"
Barnes moustache quivered in that way it did when the man was annoyed, but then he gave a sigh and took the folder. It was highly irregular that Fittes division leaders reported directly to DEPRAC – and Quill didn't doubt that the man had better things to do than handle the bullshit paperwork- but Quill's superiors had been quite clear, they wanted a clear line of communication with DEPRAC, and if he didn't do as they told him, he'd lose his high position just as fast as he'd gotten it.
"I doubt it will be any different from the other files you've given me the past few weeks Mr Kipps," Barnes conceded. "You be on your way then. Do us both a favour and see if you can manage to stay out of here for the rest of the night."
"I will," Quill said. Then he turned around to follow Lucy.
"Miss Carlyle!" He called, hurrying after her through the glass doors onto Victoria Street. It obviously surprised the girl to hear her name. She froze in her stride and looked around as if she expected somebody else to react to the call.
"Good evening, Miss Carlyle," he greeted her when he'd caught up with her. Lucy looked at him with a weary gaze before returning the greeting. For a moment they silently took each other in, and now that he had approached her, Quill wasn't sure what to say.
"Where are Tony and Cubbins?" he started and immediately realised it was the wrong thing to say when Lucy's jaw set and her eyes hardened.
"I'm not in the mood Kipps," she snapped, and she was about to turn around and walk off.
"Hey, hey, I didn't mean…" he cut himself off and tried a different tactic. "You look like you could use a cup of coffee, my treat."
Lucy gave him another suspicious look, but after a moment's thought she nodded.
"Lead the way then."
Quill took Lucy to the coffee shop right across from the New Scotland Yard building. It was a small establishment with a handful of booths and tables scattered across the space in a random pattern. The wait staff was nice and quick and more importantly; it was one of the few coffee shops in Westminster that stayed open at night. In other areas of London, these kinds of cafes were dens for unsavoury people, but due to its location right across from the police station, Relicmen and even Night-watch kids generally avoided the coffee shop, which made it perfect for quiet conversations.
Lucy didn't speak as she sat down in the booth and placed her backpack between her feet. Hell, she didn't even look at him, and Quill was wondering if this whole endeavour had been a foolish idea after all. Only after the coffee had been ordered and delivered by a waitress who was way too chirpy for the time of night, did he dare to try and start a conversation again.
"So, when did you come forward with it?" Quill asked as he rotated the ear of his cup towards himself.
"Come forward with what?" Lucy was staring at her cappuccino listlessly, and for a moment Quill was worried she'd pass out right there.
"The fact that you communicate with a Type Three"
A flick had been switched. Lucy shot up so suddenly that she banged her knee on the underside of the table, making their cups rattle.
"What?" she asked sharply. Her eyes were wide and focussed on him, all previous traces of her fatigue gone.
"The Type Three," Quill repeated. "You carry it around in that backpack of yours, right?" He nudged the backpack between her feet with his shoe and watched as Lucy twitched as if somebody just yelled into her ear.
"Please don't do that," she muttered, not bothering to deny his suspicions. "How did you even know?"
"You told me," Quill answered, "but if you didn't go public with it, why are you working with other agencies? Lockwood and Cubbins are really overworking you, you look like crap."
"Wow thanks, that's just what a girl wants to hear Kipps," Lucy muttered darkly. She grabbed her little coffee spoon and gave her drink a quick stir, but didn't raise the cup to her lips. Instead, she stared down at the brown swirl she had created in the milk foam as if it held the secrets of the universe.
"But seriously, how did you know? I know I didn't tell you, and we have always taken great care to make sure nobody knows."
"In the typical Lockwood and Co manner, I'm sure. Bobby Vernon has his suspicions as well you know? Said you were arguing with somebody besides Holly Munro when you were getting him out of that elevator shaft."
Lucy gave a little snort. "Please, he was so out of it he was having fever dreams about goldfish."
"You also snapped something about an evil ghost skull in your backpack while getting back to us, apparently."
Lucy stared at him for a moment and then dropped her forehead into her hands with a deep sigh.
"What makes you think that wasn't a fever dream of his?" she tried weakly.
Quill chuckled. "I would have thought it was," he admitted, "and Kat certainly believed so." In fact, the blonde girl had straight up laughed in Bobby's face when he had told them about his suspicions. "But as I said, you told me before."
"But I don't… When?" Lucy asked, lowering her hands and looking him in the eyes.
"This summer, during the whole affair with the Bone Glass, Lucy," He clarified. He raised his coffee and took a long sip of the cooling beverage. "You know, during that fiasco we call the fight with Joplin?"
"What made you think it wasn't a bluff? I was trying to save my skin back there,"
"You started talking to it after that though, when George was grappling with Joplin, and you had the mirror. And in contrast to Bobby, I was fully conscious."
Lucy opened her mouth, probably to say something scathing about his observational skills or consciousness at the time, but seemed to think better of it and closed it again.
For a moment they sat in the booth in silence and drank their coffee.
"Okay, so you didn't tell the public about your talent," Quill said after he'd drained his cup.
Lucy shook her head. "No. You know what kind of madness any psychic curiosity provokes, and I don't want to end up as some kind of DEPRAC experiment. Nor do I want any other kind of attention to be honest…"
"Okay," Quill nodded, "I get that, but why are you working with other agencies then?"
A grimace appeared on her face as she spoke, as if saying the words physically hurt her.
"I'm a freelancer."
For a moment Quill wondered if the mix of insomnia and caffeine he'd been living on for the last few weeks had finally caught up with him, because he could not have heard that right.
"What do you mean, 'I'm a freelancer'? What about Lockwood?" he asked, not even bothering to try to hide his bafflement.
"I quit."
"… You quit."
"Are you a bloody parrot, Kipps? That's what I just said isn't it?"
He let the jab slide off of him without a comment, too busy staring at her in utter disbelief. It had always surprised him how loyal Lucy was to the tiny agency – she had even refused the position at Fittes he had offered her – and he had a hard time processing the fact that she had just walked out on them.
"Why? Did Lockwood hook up with the new girl or something?"
"What? He didn't! And it doesn't have anything to do with Holly!" Lucy protested, just a little too vehemently.
"I don't get it, why would you quit?" Quill asked again.
Lucy hesitated for a moment, and when she finally did speak, it was quietly.
"The Aickmere Poltergeist." She whispered the three words as if speaking them out loud would summon the Visitor into the shop, and Quill didn't blame her. It had been a few years since he had last been able to see Visitors, but the effects of poltergeists were just as clear to him as to the younger agents, and Aickmere Poltergeist had certainly provided him with nightmares for a good few weeks.
"I… I was the focus," Lucy continued, as Quill didn't reply. She looked down and fiddled with her spoon. "Holly and I had a fight and… well, I guess Bobby will have told you all about it," she continued with a forced chuckle.
"So… this is about Holly?"
"No it's not! Why does everything have to be about her?" Lucy snapped. Quill held up his hands in a placating gesture and Lucy let out a long sigh.
"Sorry," she muttered softly. "But it really isn't. It's more that… my talent is really strong, and I've been having a hard time keeping my emotions in check. There are times when I don't feel like I'm in control anymore, and I don't have to tell you how dangerous that is."
And she didn't. He knew exactly what could happen when emotions ran high during a haunting, and the results were seldom good. Visitors tended to latch on to the person with the strongest talent, or the highest emotions. It was why it was relatively safe for supervisors to join in on hauntings, until fear got the better of them. Still, to think Lucy had been responsible for the poltergeist that had turned a whole department store on its head was rather humbling.
She was powerful then. But still, couldn't her friends help her with that? From what Quill had seen at Fittes, it was easiest to train young agents with strong talents when they were in a familiar environment with people they trusted to watch their backs. Wasn't Lucy taking a big risk by leaving her friends?
"How does leaving help with that?" he asked.
"It keeps the others out of danger," Lucy replied immediately, but her answer sounded forced and Quill wasn't convinced that was her whole reasoning for making the decision.
"Would they not have been able to help you train?"
A flicker of something passed over Lucy's face, but then she schooled her expression again.
"Why do you even care Kipps? You don't like any of us."
"I care because you look about ready to collapse, and chances are you will hurt yourself for real if you don't let somebody in soon. So, seeing as you are apparently abandoning your friends…"
"I'm a danger to them," she said with an air of finality. It was clear that she didn't want to discuss it further, but Quill wasn't ready to lay off just yet.
"They're agents, Lucy. They know how to protect themselves, and being on your own obviously isn't doing you much good."
For a moment the familiar spark of defiance flared up in her hazel eyes, and Quill wondered if she would finally explain her decision, but then she looked back down.
"It's the best decision," she whispered, and Quill was about ready to tear his hair out. Why couldn't she just tell him what was going on?"
"But why?"
"Because I would get him killed!"
…Ah. Now they were getting somewhere. Quill had managed to push past her emotional walls, and while he felt a little bad for the way her eyes glimmered with tears, he was glad she was finally opening up. He didn't have to ask whom she meant.
"He is always risking his life for me, and there have been so many close calls… I couldn't live with myself if he-" she stopped speaking abruptly and wiped at her eyes with an almost angry gesture. "My presence put the team at risk. It was the best decision," she repeated, and if she sounded like she was trying to convince herself as well as Quill, he didn't call her out on it.
There was another beat of silence neither of them seemed to dare break until Lucy suddenly cocked her head as if listening to a far away voice. When Quill focussed, he felt the barest hint of psychic energy, and he realised the ghost in her backpack was speaking to her.
"I've got to go," she muttered and got up. She rummaged in her pocket, presumably to dig up money to cover her part of the bill, but Quill held up a hand.
"I've got it," he told her, and pulled a tenner out of his wallet. He placed the money on their table and then got up as well.
"You don't have-"
"It's fine Lucy," Quill interrupted. "I told you it was my treat, and I make more than enough money to cover that one cappuccino you drank."
"Well, thank you then…" She said quietly.
"It's fine," Quill assured her again, and then without really knowing why, he added, "Listen, if you ever need to talk to somebody, I'd be willing to listen."
Lucy's eyes grew wide, but after a moment she nodded.
"Thank you, Quill. I'll keep that in mind"
The two of them left the little coffee shop together, and paused in the squares of light on the pavement, that shone through the shops large windows.
"Well," Lucy began her goodbye awkwardly, "thank you for looking out for me tonight. Good night…"
She started to walk away when Quill called out for her.
"Lucy, I know I'm not exactly his friend, but I've known Tony- Lockwood, for a long time. You might believe your decision protects him, but I think it just might have the opposite effect."
A/N: It's always been my personal head canon that Quill knows about the fact that Lucy can communicate with Type Threes, and the idea of him confronting her with it has been in my mind for quite some time now.
I hope you enjoyed this fic, let me know whether you would want me to expand on this universe alteration in a comment!