hello everybody!
it's been awhile, hasn't it?
I've been so busy, it's insane. it's my third year of uni and between a double major and a job, it's been rough. I decided to try to push through a story, so I hope it's alright. I dunno how it'll end or whatever, but I want to try. I did just discover the LBMR manga that Level-5 published so it has reinvigorated me, even for just a short short while.
The moment Lucy takes a step out of the small flat she has been renting since last Tuesday, she knows it's a possible mistake. There's no reason for her to come downstairs; she won't start working at the Met for another three days and she has nothing that requires her to be out late at night. It had been two years since she had been in London and a month since she had been working in Bakewell as their resident Detective Constable. She loved walking down the streets of Bakewell for fun; it hadn't been the most interesting but the cold air and silence beyond the nature had been wonderful. It calmed the silence of her mind and working in there had been fun; patrol with the occasional investigations for smaller crimes like theft had been nice.
London isn't like that.
London is lively but still eerily silent to her ears. It's nearing an ungodly hour for and the cold air still hits her just like in Bakewell, but the silence seems daunting and the air seems suffocating. It wouldn't be different than her current flat, which felt impersonal and barely lived in—not that it wasn't, but she hated it. The streets seemed to continue and continue on until she's by Big Ben. It's freezing, she wishes she brought a thicker coat, but there's nothing to be done by it now. There's the occasional individual passing her by and she knows she should go home; despite knowing how to defend herself, the streets aren't a place to be around by one's lonesome. She has her badge with her; from habit or something else, she isn't sure, but it feels like a heady weight in her pocket.
The clock shines with the time, almost nearing 2 am in the morning. Her hair sweeps with the wind as she looks up and takes a glance to the North and she can see the pathway to the Scotland Yard in her head. It's relatively close to walk to and before she knows it, she's enveloped by warmth within the station. The familiar scent of stale coffee emanates even now and the quiet murmur of an officer here and there with a civilian, but overall relatively calm for a late evening.
She passes by reception quickly, the glint of her badge that she moved on her hip prior to entering the Yard shining under the gaudy lights and she traverses through the familiar hallways. A part of her almost doesn't want to be here, but the reasoning is lost on her. The anticipation of seeing someone familiar who could be working at night is terrifyingly possible and she feels the need to flee, but let nobody say Lucy Baker never backed down from a challenge.
A turn here and a turn there and she finds herself near the back of the Yard, somewhere familiar.
The Mystery Room is a light at the end of the tunnel, yet that tunnel is a far off concept that she isn't sure she wants to go to because the dark felt safer—ignorance was bliss after all. There's a dim light behind the glass pane of the door, most likely the lamp on the desk at the near back. She wonders if the place is still the kind of messy-clean where you know where items are if you worked there but not the kind where a stranger would find the right things. A two am job, it most likely meant that the Prof—Alfendi—was still working on a truly cracking case.
Was this even worth it?
Without fault, her hand outstretches itself from her side and she grabs ahold of the brass handle and turns it, slowly pushing the door open.
Alfendi Layton was and always has been such a study, a person that Lucy knew was more than what he just interpreted himself to be. Even two years later, even when he looked small and wasn't completely the same, it was still amazing to study him every time. She took in his appearance, the wine red scruff and ponytail that had grown longer than he usually let it go, the way his sweater hung on his loose frame sans lab coat, and most importantly, his olive eyes holding a tiredness that she didn't quite know how to explain.
It was comical, she supposed, the way his mouth was ready to form a curse, a demand for the intruder to leave; all of it disappeared with a blink of an eye as his mind caught up with his eyes and he was absolutely struck. She wonders if she has the same look on her face as well.
"Lucy," his voice cracks and he clears his throat immediately, but Lucy catches the disbelief in his voice. Maybe he'd been here for longer than he should; Alfendi should have probably gone home ages ago.
"Hi, Prof," the nickname comes naturally, without fail. She tries to remember how to breathe, but clearly she's failing. She takes a moment, a steadying proper breath and smiles a shaky smile. "'ow 'ave you been?"
"Good…good, would you like to come in?" He silently motions for the empty couch that she'd spend a night or two on taking a kip during a brutal case, which had been moved to be close to the desk he was sitting by. She nods, stepping in to the Mystery Room that she realizes no longer looks like the Mystery Room as her focus shifts from him to the room itself. It looks more like any other typical office in the Met, just a tad bit bigger than a lot of them. The haphazardly strewn newspapers and clippings were no longer present within the office. It was clean, an eerie kind of clean that would seem normal, had Lucy not been here two years prior.
"Blimey, you cleaned up." The observation causes him to raise his eyebrows and he blinks, as if that wasn't the first thing he expected her to say.
"It'd been irritating me for years. Finally did something about it." He says it like it pains him to say.
She doesn't pry.
The silence returns and she doesn't know what to say; she almost expects Al to show up. The person she's speaking to is Fendi, she's sure of it.
"Would you like a cuppa?" Ah, the British cure-all of tea. She shakes her head though, offering a sheepish smile.
"No, no, it's alright."
They lapse into silence once more and as she takes him in closer, he looks paler than he used to. It definitely wasn't the light, as it actually should have made him look more golden than deathly pale. Had he been eating well?
"Are you okay?" She blurts out the question quickly, a heat forming in her cheeks as she asks. It appears that he hadn't anticipated the question, the way his face—how very open of it to be—tenses up.
"What kind of answer would you like, my dear?" The familiar tingle of heat rises to her cheeks, always whenever he'd call her some endearment. She wills it away; she's not here to rekindle something.
"Any you'd like to tell me."
"I've been surviving."
The unyielding truth has never been more unnervingly uncomfortable to her.
"Blimey." She looks down at her shoes and at the rug of the Mystery Room, Was this new carpeting?
"What have you been doing?"
"Mm?" She looked back up, seeing his expectant face.
"Where have you been?"
"I've been in Bakewell."
"Bakewell? In Derbyshire? What on Earth possessed you to go there?"
"Mm. The Commissioner transferred me at my request." To get away from you, from this was left unsaid.
"Oh, that's good. How was it?"
"Good, good, rarely any murders. Ee, everybody knew each other and it was mainly petty theft that would happen."
"Ah. good. Well, that's good."
Alfendi has gone quiet again. It was completely uncharacteristic of him. She remembers his longwinded monologues, almost akin to a play, every time he'd speak. Now he seems muted, both in voice and in color overall. He's twirling his pen, the papers at his desk long forgotten. The Reconstruction Machine lets out a low hum, but beyond that, all that was audible was their breathing.
She can't tell how he's feeling. Despite being so open, the face she was looking at seemed foreign, a familiar afterimage yet the memories weren't coming to her.
Lucy didn't really know what to say.
She chose to shut him out, to choose herself in a way that many would call self-preservation—selfish, but necessary for them both. Two years of getting away from anything that would remind her of Alfendi, intentionally requesting a small town in the country so the likelihood of murder would be significantly less than if it were London or any other larger area. What they had…whatever it had been, had Lucy been more experienced, maybe she would have stayed. Would have been more for him and helped him through it, even if it wasn't her explicit responsibility. She would try, for him.
Forbodium, while Alfendi had been innocent, was shockingly too much the following months. Alfendi had grown despondent, hating himself with every turn and would continuously choose to lash out at Lucy when he desired. He may have had his answers, but the solution was another thing altogether. Lucy wasn't qualified to be there in the way that truly mattered and with the Prof, Lucy decided, dramatics sometimes were required. So, she left.
Lucy left him alone with nothing but a short note—one couldn't quite call it a letter. She rewrote it so many times, she could recall it without failure:
Prof,
I'm really sorry. I don't think I can be here with you anymore. You were one of the best things that ever happened to me, but I thought Forbodium wouldn't stop you. Wouldn't stop us.
I was wrong.
I think it would be best if we didn't talk for awhile. I'm going to transfer out. Somewhere else, far from London. Please don't try to find me. For your sake and mine.
Lucy
"Who am I speaking to right now?"
She wasn't planning on asking.
Alfendi blinks, surprised as Lucy was at the words.
"What do you deduce, my dear? I'm sure your two years away have sharpened your detective skills."
It's a soft blow against her time away and she doesn't fault him for it. If anything, she welcomes it. She did leave without warning, after all. Lucy wants to blurt out that she doesn't know, she never does know, she thought she knew his quirks but she doesn't know now. Two years does a lot to a person.
"I don't know."
"Hmm. Well, we're living in peace, if you must know. Your…absence has caused a lot of introspection."
"Introspection?"
"A lot of therapy, if you must request the explicit details. It has been…quite helpful. While the methods are personally not to taste all the time, being clear with…myself has been enlightening. The two of us are aware that neither are leaving anytime soon, perhaps never. Psychoanalytic therapy has been quite useful in discovering how to work in harmony and realize the mistakes we have made in fighting against each other instead of working together." He looks down at the case file in front of him. "I have been told very frequently I have made a multitude of mistakes during your stay here."
"You—"
"No, don't start with the platitudes, Baker." Oh, she can see it now. The slight shift. The barest of changes, intertwined with the way he dramatically changes how he holds himself. She was talking to Fendi the whole time, save for several sentences here and there, but their dynamic is so fluid and in sync now, a normal person wouldn't have quite specifically noticed that his posture had changed to be sitting in a more casual position and the grip on his pen had grown tighter every time Al spoke.
Whoever that therapist was, they deserve a raise.
"Prof—"
"Why are you really here, Baker? Let's not go around it any longer."
"I…I dunno. It was somethin' on a whim. I'm sorry." She rises from her seat, finding the urge to flee almost immediately, "you must be busy with your case. I shan't trouble you any longer."
The hard look from his face dissipates. She doesn't try to say anything else, starting to turn away from the man she had thought to be her future for a very long time.
"Wait, Baker."
And damn him, she stops. She's not the bright-eyed twenty-five year old she once was. She's twenty-seven with a hell of a lot more experience with life and people and she didn't have to stop for him. She didn't have to stop for nobody—she could rebuild her life in London without having Alfendi Layton in it.
"I missed you," he blurts out and Lucy is caught entirely off guard by the proclamation. "I missed your presence here, I missed the way your brow furrowed and while your deductions sometimes needed work, I missed the confidence you had with every conclusion you spoke. I missed knowing you were here and I hated every second you were gone. Two years. Two long years of trying to keep your memory alive in my head. You were so much more than I've ever seen in my life and I despised myself for driving you away. You deserve so much more than I could ever offer you, but all I ask is a chance. One chance."
"It's a little late now for that, don't you think?"
It's snarky, it's derisive, all of the negative adjectives she could describe the words she just said. It huts Alfendi like a physical blow; the impact appearing to sting him as if it were real.
"I don't know what to think!" He's standing now, hands slamming down the desk. She takes a step back. "I don't…I don't know what you want from me, Lucy. I don't know what you want."
"I don't want anything! Nowt anymore." She whispers the last bit and grimaces. It's true. It was a true mistake to come here and it was even more egregious of an attempt to even think that they could even talk civilly anymore. Whatever unspoken things they had back then, it was no longer the same two years later.
"Solve a case with me."
The request is simple and plain. It would be easy; Alfendi already has a case loaded and ready to go. She'd just have to catch up and see where he's stuck on. She blinks, trying to read his intentions, but his face is open, merely requesting this one thing.
"Prof…"
His hands clench in a rhythmic motion—she wonders if that's a new quirk he gained from the therapist when things were getting out of control. She beats him to speaking.
"That therapist of yours must be bloody brilliant."
"What?"
"You would have threatened me by now if I hadn't gone your way or would have intercepted yourself verbally. You didn't do either."
"Yes, well." He straightens himself up. "It's something to practice constantly."
"Ah."
"I believe the Met might think I'm worse off than I was before. The changes, all of them were things they got used to in time. Practicing being better to them and to the suspects, even when I was 98.17% sure they'd been lying."
The adage of the specific percentage makes her smile, but she looks down, away. There's no sign of another person in this room beyond him—it was silly, she knows it is.
"If you desire an answer, you have to ask the right questions."
When she says nothing and continues to turn further pink, he lets out a low huff.
"I haven't replaced you. Barton hasn't even attempted either."
Even now, it feels like she's being scrutinized in a way that should be illegal. She wonders briefly if he could tell that she was relieved.
"Ee, alright."
"Have you?"
The innocence of the question causes Lucy to look up suddenly, blinking. It was his turn to look pink, but the man doesn't back down from her. If anything, he looks more intently.
"Blimey, no. Had a mother try to get her son with me here and there, but they never really were my type or they deserved something better."
That wasn't the answer he was looking for, she realizes belatedly. While it is true that there hasn't been a mentor following Alfendi, he wasn't referring to romantic prospects. Alfendi, whether or not he was attempting to save her dignity, did not say anything in regards to it.
"Nonsense, my dear. There is nobody better."
"Right." Her voice trails off, mouth turning to flat line. Alfendi is still looking at her expectantly.
"So…will you, my dear?"
Lucy turns to the Reconstruction Machine, still humming to itself with a low light emanating from it. The door was right behind her. She could go back on her wish to return here. She could go to a whole new division. She could work with Hilda, work in another small town that would bore her beyond death. She could do multiple things besides the one that her body is currently walking towards. Before she is even truly cognizant of it, she's already in front of the Reconstruction Machine, working the familiar dials already.
"Ee, tell me about the case."