A/N: fighting between siblings
There are some things that every single agent knows. Rules you have to learn before your supervisor even allows you to touch a satchel of iron filings, let alone sends you into a haunted house. One of the more important things you learn is not to hesitate on the threshold. Do not allow fear to settle in before you even enter a haunted location. Fear will trigger your common sense, and you'll want to run away, like any sane person would. You'll be set up for failure before the job has even started.
The next rule agents learn is to keep control of your feelings. Fear, anger, sadness; Visitors feed on all of these emotions, amplifying them until they undermine your rational thoughts and strengthen the haunting to catastrophic levels. I can speak from experience on that. Children learn to keep an iron grip on their emotions in haunted houses, to pack them away and focus on the task at hand. Supervisors focus on it a lot, the Fittes Manual has an entire chapter on anger management and how to keep a clear head. Yes, there is a lot of attention on controlling your emotions when training to become an agent.
Nobody ever tells you that keeping everything cropped up inside can lead to explosive situations as well.
I got up before anyone else was awake the morning after we secured the station, as I had been doing since we arrived in Whitton on Dean. Without opening the curtains, I gathered an outfit from the clothes I had left strewn around the room (to Holly's great frustration) and got dressed. I ran a brush through my hair in a few quick strokes and decided that was good enough. The sound my brush made on the wood of my nightstand as I put it down seemed deafening, but Holly didn't stir. After tiptoeing across the room, I slipped out of the door.
A few weak rays of sunlight fell through the window in the hall as I made my way to the stairs, capturing dust particles in a haze of gold. Despite the sunrise, the house felt cold and dark, and I couldn't help but remember the feeling I get when walking around in a haunted house before darkness falls. The cottage wasn't haunted. Not by a visitor anyway, disregarding the skull in the jar underneath my bed. And yet the knot in my stomach wouldn't loosen. As I approached the stairs, I threw a look up to the staircase leading up to the attic. Shaking my head to banish the memory of the echos in the station, I made my way downstairs.
I tried to tell myself it was Mam's absence I felt, that I was finally feeling some grief now that I had nothing to distract me from the reality that she was gone forever. At the same time, I was aware I was only trying to fool myself. I wasn't anymore sad about her demise than I had been the past few days.
I made myself some toast and brewed a cup of tea. Normally I would have a heartier breakfast, but I didn't feel hungry. When both were ready I sat down at the table and slowly ate it. I tried not to think, focussing on my meagre breakfast, and when I finished it, on the pair of blackbirds flying to and fro on the other side of the window. Perhaps they were building a nest in the hedge that separated the garden from the neighbour's. I wanted to tell them that this place could never be a home, but what would they care? They could come and go whenever they pleased.
So could I
The realisation threw me out of my melancholic musings. So could I.
There was no reason for me to stick around here. The funeral had passed, Lockwood and Co had sealed my father's source at the station, and my sisters and I had negotiated about Mam's estate with the solicitor. There was no more unfinished business I needed to attend to.
I jumped up from the kitchen chair and deposited my plate and empty mug into the sink. The boards of the stairs creaked underneath my feet as I rushed back upstairs, but I couldn't be bothered to muffle my steps. I only quieted my movements when I slipped back in my room, where Holly was still snoring delicately.
Trying not to wake her, I started gathering my clothes and folded them as neatly as I could. That is to say, not neatly at all, but I knew this way they would all fit back into my overnight bag, and that was good enough.
The sound of the metal zipper tore apart the silence as I opened my bag to put my luggage back inside, and Holly stirred. She sat up, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with her hand.
"Lucy? What're you doing?" She managed, still sounding half asleep.
"I'm packing up," I replied, not looking up from the floor where I was trying to find the partner to the lonely sock I held.
"Beside the nightstand," Holly pointed out, "are we leaving already?"
"Thanks. We have no reason to stay anymore, we can go back to London." I found the second sock and folded them together.
"Are you sure?"
I nodded. "The agency needs to get back to business soon too, before Fittes tries something at Portland Row."
"If you need more time, I'm sure Lockwood wouldn't mind if you stay a while longer. You can always take a couple days of emergency leave. There's no rush for you to say goodbye to your childhood home."
She meant well, but the thought of staying behind on my own made my stomach twist. My friends' support had been invaluable during the past few days and being left without them did not sound appealing.
"I'm sure. I want to leave," I stated. After a moment of hesitation I added, "We've been over the estate with the solicitor. Mary and Rebecca are putting their savings together to buy us out for the cottage. It won't be gone after I leave."
It seemed to ease Holly's mind, knowing I wasn't just turning my back on the chance to… what? Say goodbye to my childhood? If I were honest, I doubted I'd come back to Whitton on Dean soon, even after Mary and Rebecca moved back into the cottage. Coming back here didn't feel like coming home, or revisiting my youth, or whatever Holly associated with her own childhood home. It just reminded me I didn't belong in the North anymore and hadn't for a good two years.
"If you get dressed and start packing, I can go back down and make you breakfast," I offered. Holly pulled a face, but quickly schooled her expression. "That's okay, Lucy," she said. "You wake the boys, I'll cook up something simple."
Forty minutes later, we were all dressed, and half of our bags were in the hall near the front door. We had kept our kit packed as much as possible, but our personal belongings would take longer to pack. Holly had made oatmeal with banana and the cinnamon she had found in the depths of one of the kitchen drawers, and even I had been tempted to have a bowl.
Rebecca and Judith entered the kitchen a while later, and we earned raised eyebrows for being up before them. It was unusual for agents to be up this early. Both Judith and Rebecca stayed quiet as they ate. Nobody seemed to mind the silence, least of al me. I had a hard time looking at my sisters, with the memory of the echo I heard last night still fresh in my mind.
We had just started cleaning up when the front door opened. While I gathered the bowls and Holly put the cutlery in the dishwasher, there was a crash from the hallway, followed by a couple minced oaths. Rebecca turned to me.
"Did you leave your kit in the hallway again?" she asked.
"Again?" I repeated, confused by her accusatory tone. We had kept our equipment upstairs in the bedrooms from the moment we had arrived here.
"You always used to do that," Judith added.
Before I could defend myself, Margaret entered the kitchen with Alice trailing after her, rubbing her reddened elbow.
"Why are there kitbags in the hallway? Alice tripped over them, " Margaret said.
"Yeah, thanks for pointing out the obvious, Maggie," Alice muttered.
"Sorry," I started, trying to de-escalate the situation before a fight broke out. "We're leaving this afternoon, so we started packing. I didn't mean to inconvenience you."
"You're leaving?" Judith repeated, disbelief dripping from her voice. While Margaret and Alice didn't voice their thoughts, I could read their expressions well enough to see they were upset as well.
"We should finish packing," Quill remarked quickly, ushering Holly and George to the door. They went with him without protest. Both of them were eager to get out of the way of the trademarked Carlyle Temper, which seemed to get closer to exploding from all sides with every passing second. Only Lockwood hesitated, unsure whether leaving me to fend for myself was the best decision.
He tried to catch my gaze. His dark eyes were concerned, and I wanted to plead with him to stay, but instead I gave a curt nod. This was a family matter.
"We'll be upstairs if you need us," Lockwood assured me, and then followed the others out of the kitchen.
The moment the door fell shut behind him, my sisters turned to me.
"Unbelievable," Alice muttered, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
"What?" I asked hesitantly. I felt like I was walking across a minefield, and one wrong word would blow me up sky high.
"I can't believe you're bailing on us!"
"I'm not-"
"You kind of are," Margaret said, her expression dark. She sank into the rocking chair in the corner, resting a hand on her belly. "Don't you think it's kind of fast to leave already, Lucy?"
"I don't know," I started, "there's not much left for me to-"
"Mam hasn't been in the ground for forty-eight hours, and instead of spending time with your family, you're already prancing off with your little southern posse!" Judith bit out.
I don't know why her venom surprised me, Judith and I had always butted heads. But somehow, this felt different.
"What is your problem?" I cried out. "From the moment I arrived you've been on my case, and I'm done putting up with it!"
"Putting up with it? You waltz in here like you own the place and expect everyone to just adjust themselves to your ideas! The world doesn't revolve around you and your little job, Lucy!"
"My little job put bread on the table!"
"And we're ever so grateful," Judith spat. "It's not like you let us forget, stomping around in those awful boots with a sword at your side! I'm surprised you didn't wear them to the funeral!"
"Judith, that's enough," Margaret sighed. Her eyebrows were knitted together in a deep frown, and in the weird lighting, she unmistakably looked like Mam. If Mam had been 35 years younger and heavily pregnant.
"Thanks," I muttered, shooting Judith a dark look.
"I'm not taking your side here either," Margaret told me. "I don't understand why you have decided you need to run off, and I don't agree with it."
I threw up my hands in frustration. "What's left to do for me here? We've made the arrangements, we went through Mam's stuff, we're done!"
"We are, but-" Rebecca didn't get to finish her sentence, because Alice cut her off.
"So you're just going to abandon your family?" She asked, her voice soft and dangerously level.
"Abandon?" I repeated. "Abandon? I dropped everything to rush up north when Mary called! I was here for the arrangements, I was here for the funeral, I was here when Mam passed away! What more do you want from me?!"
"That you don't run away like a little girl every time things are a little different from how you want! Not everything can be solved by waving a stupid sword at it or running off!" Judith sneered.
"I don't-"
"No? Isn't that exactly what you did after the Mill?"
The mention of the Wythburn Mill hit me like a smack upside the head, and I was so taken aback by it I could only gape at her. Because I didn't have a retort ready to stop Judith's rant, so she continued without mercy.
"The court case didn't end the way you liked, so you ran off to London! You're gone for a year and a half, and when you finally come back, you don't even have the decency to stay the full week like you said you would! Is this how you treat your friends too? Did you sneak out in the middle of the night to move into that Tooting flat last winter? You can't keep running away from your problems!"
Something snapped. The anger welling up in my chest was jagged and sharp, and it felt like it would tear me apart if I didn't get it out right now.
"I'm just following your example!" I exploded. My voice seemed to echo impossibly in the small kitchen, and I realised I had shouted. I couldn't bring myself to care. I didn't understand where Judith had gotten the audacity from to bring up the court case or my move to Tooting. She knew nothing about the circumstances of either events.
"What does that mean Lucy?" Rebecca asked slowly, looking between me and our older sister.
"You want to know what it means?" I didn't look at Rebecca as I spoke, keeping my eyes on Judith instead, who had paled so fast she was swaying on her feet.
"Let me tell you. Our dear older sisters know quite a lot about running away themselves."
"Lucy-"
"Because they moved to Newcastle together? Lucy, you couldn't have expected them to live at home forever. Alice and Judith needed the extra shifts with the Nightwatch in the city to save up to start their carriers-" Rebecca began, but I cut her off."I'm not talking about when they moved out."
"Lucy, don't-"
I didn't let Alice finish her sentence either. "Did you know they were there, the day Da died?"
"What?" Rebecca's gaze flitted between us, unsure who to settle on.
"They were there. He didn't just stumble in front of a train because he was drunk. He miss-stepped while chasing after them."
"Lucy stop it!" Margaret had gotten to her feet, the rocking chair rocking behind her. "You do not understand what happened that day. You were four."
"I do understand! I know you were running away from home, that you didn't plan on returning if he hadn't caught you." I paused, taking a deep breath to stop my voice from cracking. "He was the one haunting the station. I picked up on so much."
"Lucy, you must understand then, he was dangerous-"
"Of course I know he was dangerous Alice! I remember what he was like with me, and I felt-…" I cut myself off, shaking my head to push the memories of the echo out of my mind as fast as I could. "He was a monster."
"He was," Judith started, and there was a flash of relief on her face at my understanding. I did not feel bad about taking it away again with my next words.
"And the three of you were going to leave the rest of us with him."
Rebecca seemed to have decided on which sister to side with, and she turned on the eldest three with a look of hurt. "Were you really going to leave us, just like that?" she asked.
Alice was the one who found her voice first. "It wasn't like that, Becca… He- he'd gone too far, and we needed to get away. We would've alerted the police, I promise."
"Even so, that would still left us in the path of his anger! If you did go to the police on arrival in Newcastle, who knows when they would've gotten here."
"Well that didn't happen, did it?" Margaret's voice was low and cold, and I knew she was furious. "He got himself run over and ended all of our troubles for us. I don't see why we're wasting our time arguing over this when we started with the fact that Lucy thinks she's above spending time with her family."
"I think no such thing," I told her, "but I won't stick around to pretend we're a tight-knit, buddy-buddy family, because we all know it's bullshit."
"Lucy!" Alice gasped.
"Oh, sod off, I'm not your son. We're not even close enough for anyone to inform me Grace got engaged to Peter. So if you're done judging me from on top of your high horses, I've got to finish packing."
Without waiting for a reply, I turned around and left the kitchen.
A/N: Hi, I didn't abandon this story! This is the penultimate chapter, and it feels a little strange to be this close to the end (I'll try not to have another four-month gap between chapters). Please let me know your thoughts!