Three Weeks Earlier
Lucy turns over in her bed, in the dead of night. The room grows menacing and ominous as she props open her eyes. She had not been able to sleep yet, due to that weird, wiggly Lincoln moment she was exposed to, courtesy of her older jock sister.
It wasn't just that that kept her up, but also that Lynn seemed to be excited while watching it happen. Menstruation, was it? It was a long word that Lucy had trouble remembering, and as of yet, she felt that might've not been the right one.
Whatever the case, it surely was an odd spectacle that Lynn had never shown interest in before. That, and it was creepy. Not on Lucy's levels, but a different type of creepy. One she was personally unfamiliar with... Until now.
Lynn notices the regularly scheduled sighs have gone mysteriously. "Luce? Lucy?" Lynn turns to her side, and reaches out for a nearby ball she could grab from underneath the bed. "What's up?"
Lucy is hit with what she realizes is a tennis ball, right on her noggin. "Ow!"
"Oh, you're awake," Lynn realizes. "I didn't think you were. Where's the sighing I'm used to? Something wrong?" Lynn was eager to get some sleep, and now a tad bit curious to know the source of the lack of Lucy's sad wails.
"It's nothing," Lucy relieves. "I'm just thinking..."
"Oh, well, can you sleep on it? It feels out of place when you don't sigh."
Lucy tilts herself toward Lynn's direction, despite it being pitch black to see. "Oh, I guess. I've never known it was music to your ears."
The goth falls silent, save for her usual state now. Once she gives off her regular sighs, Lynn lets off one of her own, but in a different tone.
"Goodnight," she calls through the darkness.
Morning
Lucy munches slowly on her extra well done scrambled egg, with a blackened piece of toast as well. She makes an unintentional clanking sound as she cuts the scrambled egg with her fork, minding her own business.
The kiddie table was more quiet this time; the twins weren't arguing over their food, and Lisa was being picky on her selection of what had or hadn't sufficient protein and other nutritional compounds. It was only Lily who was giggling away, playing with her food.
It felt strange, but not too out of Lucy's own comfort zone. Not like last night's events, which had almost left from the records of her mind. Lincoln hadn't shown up yet, a mere funny coincidence that could've meant something. She gives it no serious thought, however, and keep eating her breakfast in peace.
Behind her, Lynn gobbles down her own breakfast, which was twice the plate Lucy had, added with a protein shake, consisting of various veggies and whatnot.
"Can you literally not?" Lori retorts in a disgusted manner.
"That's what I call fast food!" Luan jokes, earning herself a kick from Luna.
"Yeah, dude, slow down, it's not a contest," Luna adds.
"I do some exercises before class. Now, hurry up, I don't wanna get there just in time!"
The other four older Louds disregard the athlete, and continue to eat without a word. Lynn starts to grow a little annoyed, until Lincoln finally steps foot into the kitchen.
"Hey, guys, sorry I'm a bit late," he apologizes.
Lynn nearly coughs, but manages to keep her food in her mouth.
"Food's on the table, twerp," Lori notifies without looking up.
Lincoln moves and takes his seat besides Lucy, and starts cutting up his scrambled egg. "Good morning, guys," he greets.
"Morning, Lincy," the twins answer.
"Salutations, dear sibling," Lisa lisps.
Lincoln begins to eat away right before Lucy just finishes up. She turns and sighs to him, the dark version of her welcoming of the day.
Lincoln was used to it, and allows it from her.
Lucy picks up her platter and moves from her seat. She noticed Lynn giving off googly eyes at Lincoln as the goth places the dirty plate snd utensil to the sink.
Freaky...
Lucy wonders what this staring meant. It was giving off a bad odor, and that was certain. She turns around to see Lynn still peeping at their white haired brother.
"Hey, Lynn?" She intentionally asks.
The athlete stumbles her head automatically to the source of the summoning voice. "Oh, wha-?" She seems spooked and a little red, but barely visible. "Yeah?"
The other four look up to both Lynn and Lucy, puzzled.
"Can you help me with something?" Lucy grows more suspiciously curious, and goes on to work some cover. "In our room."
"Oh?" Lynn raises an eyebrow, wondering what Lucy needs help with. "Alright, I'll be right there."
"Make it fast, we're leaving as soon as we're done," Lori warns, motivating Lynn to chug down the last of her breakfast and scurried off with the goth away from the kitchen. "Hey, pick up your-!" Lori groans, clearly bothered.
"Alright," Lynn cracks her knuckles just outside of their room. "Am I moving your coffin? Great! I could use a challenge."
"Actually," the soft speaking goth starts, "It's just a question."
Lynn's face portrays a second of disappointment before switching to a confused face. "What is it?" She crosses her arms, swaying her hips to that of an impatient and angry popular girl's trademakr stance.
"Yesterday, why did you show me? What was interesting about... You know, Lincoln, and whatever he was doing?"
The corners of Lynn's mouth bend out of shape, almost like she wants to smile. Seconds pass before she forces herself to snap out of her necessity to do so and speaks. "Well, uhhh, I thought it'd be interesting to see it-"
"Well, I'm wondering why. I know that's peeping, Lynn, it's not exactly right."
Lynn coughs slightly. "Oh, I'm sorry, officer. I didn't know it was illegal."
"If I can ask... What was Lincoln doing exactly?"
Lynn turns red, and tries her best to look away. "D-Did that make you feel anything? Anything at all?"
The way Lucy interprets that feels like Lynn was expecting a specific feeling that the goth was supposed to experience. "No, but I just think it was weird of you to show me. What was the point of that?"
The athlete's cheeks revert back to their regular skin color, as Lynn returned her glaze back to the younger sibling. "You didn't feel anything? Nor wonder why he was doing that?"
"Frankly, I don't know what that was exactly, but no, I have no feelings or further questions about it. And they say I'm creepy." Lucy leaves it at that, and begins to walk away, while the pondering Lynn remains in place, whistling like nothing had happened.
Night
She disregarded it all completely by the time it was eight. She lays comfortably on her bed, reading some Edgar Allan Poe works, when Lynn bursts into the room, out of breath.
Lucy sighs, delivering a grievance as she sets her book down. "Hello, Lynn," she says with no joy in her voice. "I take it you went on a jog?"
"Actually, not this time..." Lynn moves to her bed, and that's when Lucy notices the athlete's stance was off. Lynn appears to walk in such a funny manner, as if she was hit by an unseen ball.
"You okay?"
Lynn's forehead was mildly moist, now that she was close enough to be noticed by the goth. "Phew... Never better!" She dives back first into her bed, letting out a satisfied sigh and calls it a night. "I'm crashing, sis. Goodnight." The sports fan makes no effort to tuck herself in underneath the covers, and Lucy simply raises her shoulders and continues to read.
Not even five minutes pass when her nose detects a rather unfamiliar fishy smell. It wasn't exactly disgusting but it burned her nose, so she stops reading and opens the door to let the odor out. "What is that?" She wonders, looking around.
She nears the now snoring Lynn and notices a disturbing wet patch on where her privates were located. It was there, in an imperfect circle right on her red shorts.
"Umm... Ew!" The innocent Lucy figured sporty had evidently peed her pants, and probably had a tuna sandwich prior to this, explaining why it smells fishy. Lucy scurries away into the shaft, taking her book with her to find a promised isolation where the sounds of Lynn's snoring and her infectious odors were almost fully immune to the metallic maze.
She stays there, and continues to read after setting up the flashlight feature on her phone. She loses herself in The Raven, and once more, goes out of her concentration as faint mumbling comes from below.
"Sigh..." Lucy clanks her head against the grate opening, just in time to hear Lynn sleep talking.
"Lincy... My Linc... I l-..." Lynn snores out her own sentence, and it would've been humorous for the goth, if not for how strange the words seemed to display to her. The message was becoming clear, and Lucy couldn't believe she overlooked it. Maybe it was because she didn't care, like she usually doesn't, with the others' ordeals in general. Or maybe it was something more...
"I love... You..." Lynn muttered softly and... In a loving manner, it seemed. Softer words from the girl who liked to win, and would always do what it took to do so.
Lynn was undoubtedly in love, and Lucy wasn't even remotely disgusted, but rather interested.
Once upon a time, the goth had read several incest tales and knew about the concept and how frowned upon and illegal it was. Never would she imagine that sports fan Lynn Loud would actually become infatuated with her younger brother.
"Wow..." She peeps, and decides to finally come out. "Life is strange."
Now
Lucy sits in the missing sister's bed, holding the journal as she stares up at the ceiling. "Dang it, Lynn... Why did you do this?"
Lucy, now the holder of a boat load of secrets, actually begins to feel something flare up from beneath the surface.
The room was steady, and quiet. The mess of sporting equipment on Lynn's side of the room had not been cleaned up, since the day the family woke up to find them missing. That was yesterday, and the two kids were gone without a trace. No note. Nothing at all.
Luna comes into the room, without bothering to knock. "Lori's room, now," she instructs. "This is mandatory."
Lucy gently places and leaves the journal on Lynn's bed and heads to Lori's room, no doubt for the emergency meeting that was likely to be called when she had returned.
And it was at that; the goth waltzes in and is bombarded with a series of questions, and the overlapping of the others' voices makes her want to cover her ears and leave.
Lori takes one of her shoes off and hits it against her dresser. "Easy, now! So, Lucy..."
The goth takes her place by Lori and in front of the others.
"What happened? Were you interrogated, too?"
Lori tries to keep her malevolent rage from bursting, ever since the journal was found out. In fact, some of them had grown to be quite angry with the goth for keeping quiet about something so critical, related to the case. She taps her fingernails on the dresser while keeping it together.
"Yes, they asked me what I know, but it's what I told mom and dad, I knew nothing, and I still don't," thr goth answers.
Luna scoffs in the back. "Rubbish, dude! You knew to write about Lynn's bizarre behavior!"
"Luna, cease!" Lisa barks out, but Luna continues her rambling.
"Were you gonna tell the rest of us about this or was your spooky nature prohibiting you from doing so?!" She gets up from Leni's bed and gives Lucy what for.
The goth goes down with an unbalanced slap delivered by the punk rocker, but pushes past the throbbing pain, which comes as a surprise to some of them.
"Well?!" Luna still demands an answer, the only thing she knew she cared about, when forgetting all about the pair of missing siblings. "I'm bloody waiting!"
Lori moved her back while little Lucy picked herself up.
"Are you okay, Lucy?" Lori asks with a soft voice Lucy never usually detects.
"Just dandy," Lucy answers. "Look, about the journal..."
The wave of eyes all centered onto her, and she felt herself smack dab in the heat of the moment.
"I had suspicions about Lynn being real off these past couple of weeks, and I didn't know exactly why. To this day, I still couldn't give an answer, even if I had to guess. But all I've done was secretly write about the weird cases she was exhibiting. That's all it was."
"Okay, sis, but how did you know to do so? Something must've happened to make you want to do this, right?"
"You're not wrong, but it was only like a few of them in when I started to finally observe and make private reports."
"Can... I see it?" Lori hesitates, to suggest she doesn't truly want to see the contents of the journal.
"No, don't, I don't wanna know," Luna cuts in
"Understandable, so I won't read aloud, fair?"
Luna crosses her arms, turns away like a triggered rich brat.
"Bring it here, Lucy," Lori gently commands.
After that, Lucy bolts out and returns with the notebook. Lori begins to read through it, and not even halfway in does she make some whimpering sounds, but covers her mouth to break that cycle. The others go disturbed, looking away and forming fists, squeezing as Lori's muffled whimpers continue.
"Eleven... There are eleven of these..." Lori finally closes the book. "Did she really do all of this? Is this-" Lori ends herself there, hands trembling visibly. She drops the gray journal on the floor, and jets out of the room, probably to cry.
Lucy makes no attempt to pick the damn thing, and only notices the heartbroken looks among her many sisters around.
"I can't believe you didn't trust us, Luce. We could've all done something about this-"
"Luna, don't blame her," Luan defends, placing an arm on Luna's shoulder. "She couldn't have known they'd run off, otherwise she would have done something."
"That is very logical," Lisa adds. "Lucy has no more to hide anymore at the current situation. Now, I think I'll have a look see at that journal."
Lucy allows the genius to take it from her, and with that, Lisa strolls away with it.
"I'm sorry, you guys. That's-"
"Just get the bloody hell out, Luce!" Luna bursts out.
"Lucy, I second that. Some of us need time..." Luan speaks for them. "Please..."
Lucy exits back into her room, but immediately heads for the shafts. She develops the queasy need to unlock all her troubles and just let out the everything she knows and still hides from them. She gets desperate, growing conflicted with it.
Lynn and Lincoln, could they still be saved? Or at least one of them?
Lucy punches the metal surface of the shaft, making a ringing echo that hurts her ears. Maybe she deserved it, after all that had progressed.
Would the truth ever be revealed? Or would Lucy keep it away, thus making them suffer with the only question everyone wanted to know; where were the two?
Dang it... What did you get me into, Lynn?
She moves further into the vent, and hears a wrinkling sound. "Huh?" The source was from a torn-out page she feels and grabs it. "What is this?"
The page contains a message that Lucy is barely able to read without light. She takes the page to the light that shines through the entry grate, and reads;
I know what you know, and I know where they are.
This submits quite a shock to Lucy, placing her worries and fear further up, and increasing what there already was.
Someone else... Seemed to know? Everything? Lucy crushed the paper in her hands, alerted. Now, she had another thing to worry about. Another obstacle on the road.
AN: So, about this fic, I've actually found this as a challenge after the completion of the first chapter, which I now see as an easier thing than typing this chapter up.
It's gonna remain that way as I'm to create everything my way, as in nothing, notes and stuff, was passed onto me. As of yet, there is nothing really established, but I'm sure I'll come up with something soon.
But I wouldn't be surprised if I decide to scrap it. Not that I'll resort to, and I know there was a long wait from when this was Darko's.
So, enjoy.