AN: This is the fic that was almost called Lucy the Lesbian. It's my headcanon that Lucy in this fic is asexual and homoromantic, but you can interpret her as you wish so long as you don't read her as straight here.
I have to credit Animus Wyrmis for getting me into this ship - "More Dimly in Hell" deserves readers, go read that after this.
Title from Imogen Heap's "Can't Take It In", appropriately.
In that one moment they had somehow become friends. There does not seem to be much chance of their meeting again in that world or any other. But if ever they do they will rush together with their hands held out.
It's warm, even for June: the kind of humid heat that bears down, so that you're exhausted after walking even a little. Lucy ducks into back alleys to find some shade, leans against buildings to wipe her brow in a futile gesture. Even in the lightest lace top and the shortest pair of shorts she owns, she's still overheated: sweat gathers where she's tied her jacket around her waist.
The sky is very strange, now that it's approaching evening, almost greenish in places. Lucy wonders if there is a word for the kind of blue you find only in the sky, the kind that sort of fades into gold in a way that shouldn't be possible but is. It all feels like being underwater.
She rounds a corner and heads out into the main street, which is near deserted – all the better for exploring, in Lucy's view. Suddenly, exhilarated by the wide empty street and the wideness of the sky overhead, she turns and spins, letting the jacket float, almost horizontal around her waist. Even in this heat, it feels freeing, like casting off, anchors aweigh.
Then she stops, because the street isn't deserted after all, and she just locked eyes with its one other pedestrian.
The girl standing there has dark, dark hair, and her dress is blue, blue, blue, and it moves in long swathes like the sea as she turns a little, almost in slow motion, to face Lucy. Her arms and feet are bare. Lucy wants to look at her forever. At first it looks as if she isn't even touched by sweat, but then the light changes and Lucy can see it, gleaming, and she thinks nonsensically of dew and also of stars. And she stares at the girl's dark hair and the way it falls, and the sweat on the girl's bare arms.
Somehow it feels as if an incorporeal part of her – the part people mean when they say 'the heart' without meaning the physical organ – is straining against the confines of her body, to get to this girl Lucy has never seen before. Straining like homesickness.
All at once the humid air feels perfectly clear, translucent as water.
Lucy gathers her courage – a friendly attitude never hurt anything, Lucy – and smiles at the girl. It's a little easier than it should be. "Hello," she says. "I'm Lucy Pevensie. Have we met before?"
The girl smiles back, and it ripples over her face, natural as light on water. "Do you know," she says, her voice slightly accented, melodious, "I was about to say, no, we haven't. But then I realised that I wanted to ask you the same question."
Lucy's smile grows stronger, backed up by all the strength of that incorporeal part. "I'm new around here," she says. "Would you show me around?" She doesn't bother saying, if you've nothing better to do. Somehow it would be an insult, to downplay the importance of this meeting.
"Yes," the girl says, something in her voice like a breath of wind. "Come with me." Her dress swirls as she turns, and Lucy follows after, reminded of the ocean.
As they begin to run, bare-legged and carefree, Lucy thinks of a sea almost silver with light, and the roar of waves, and salt.
AN: To get the soundtrack I used writing this fic, listen to Hailey Kiyoko "Girls Like Girls", Imogen Heap "Can't Take It In", Imogen Heap "Little Bird" Royal Sapien Remix, and/or EXO "First Love" Chinese version.