Post Awakening
Chapter 5 - Lucy
"hmm, let's see here..." Lucy tapped the pencil against her lips as she struggled to find something that rhymed with hunt. "Blunt... runt... front... punt..."
There were plenty of words that rhymed, but none that seemed to work with what she was write. Normally the darkness of sitting in the vents would help her concentrate, but that afternoon, for some reason, she seemed to notice every single creak and groan that echoed throughout the ventilation system of the house. She could even hear her own siblings louder than she normally could.
"Grunt... stunt... what else is there?" she thought to herself. "Didn't Lori call Carol Pingery a..."
BANG!
Lucy covered her ears as the sound of the vibrating metal echoed to the ends of the house. "Sorry Luce!" Lynn had thrown her baseball into the vent again, forgetting that Lucy was in there.
"It's okay," she responded bleakly as she went back to her writing. "I'll have to ask Lori what that means later."
Lucy was drawing a blank. There were dozens of words that rhymed with hunt, and yet she couldn't find the right one. If only Lincoln were in the vents with her, he would know what to do, he always did. Every time she got stuck on one of her poems, not only did he have an immediate response for it, but good responses too. As if he knew what he was doing.
Lucy gave an actual sigh, more of annoyance than anything else. There was no way she was going to get anything done with all the noise going on around her, so she closed her poem book and began making her way back through the air ducts. Lucy was still fairly small, small enough to maneuver around the vents with ease, but it was getting more difficult the older she got. Eventually, she would have to resort to going outside on the roof. Maybe she would get lucky and catch a vampire during a full moon.
It was surprising when she got back to her room to find that Lynn wasn't even there. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe for once, she would be able to write on her own bed, without being interrupted by anyone. She peeked outside the door, looking left, right, and up. After quickly checking down the stairs to see no one coming up, she raced back into her own room at a speed that even Lynn would be impressed by. She set up her ink well and quill on her bed before opening up her poem book in front of her. She started on a new entry instead of continuing on the previous one. She considered it bad luck if she wrote one poem with two or more different writing utensils.
Some thoughts came to her mind; thoughts about death. Why? Lucy thought about death all the time, but after what had happened recently, that was the last thing she wanted to think about. She had to write something though, so she started putting the words on paper, letting her emotions flow. She wrote a grand total of seven words before someone came into the room. She noticed, but she didn't look up.
The white haired boy slowly inched into the room, trying to make as little noise as possible. He knew that when she had her ink well out, she didn't want to be interrupted, and he tried to enter as silently as possible.
Without looking up, Lucy said, "Lincoln, I know you're in here. What are you doing?"
He looked over at her with tight lips. He had been caught. It looked like she was still writing.
"I was uhh... trying to sneak in to scare you?"
"Not convincing enough," she replied, still staring down at her book, making an attempt to look like she was still writing, she wasn't. "Try again."
"Umm," Lincoln looked up at the ceiling and then glanced at his sister. He didn't notice earlier, but her cheeks were glistening slightly. If he could lift her bangs up, it wouldn't have been that hard to tell that she had been crying.
"Lucy?" He said, walking closer to her bed. "Are you okay?"
The closer he got, the easier it was to notice the tears from her eyes. If he hadn't decided to look closer, he wouldn't have even noticed. Her voice was stoic as ever, unwavering despite her clear state of desperation. Even her facial expression remained unchanged, and yet, the tears were as evident as ever. He got right next to the bed, grabbing a tissue from Lynn's bedside stand (she used it for nosebleeds), and wiped his sister's face.
Why was she doing this? Her voice didn't waver and she didn't think she was making a different facial expression. So why? Why couldn't she make the tears stop falling? Why was it noticeable enough to have Lincoln come over and check on her? Why did he come check on her anyway? Wasn't he in here to do something else? Why did he care so much about her, about what she wanted?
"Lucy..." he started. "You can trust me."
His words were comforting as they always were. He wasn't the master of persuasion for nothing, but she didn't need him to comfort her right now, at least, she didn't think so. She thought that being in solitude would fix the problem, like it always did before. But she couldn't have told herself a bigger lie. She didn't even realize it was a lie, but being distraught like she was had that kind of an effect. What she really needed was to be held by him, to be comforted. Nothing would work better than that and she knew it, but in her haze of emotions that she was feeling, she didn't want to.
Before Lincoln knew it, he was on the ground, rubbing his right cheek. He barely caught her running out the door of the room towards the stairs. The sound of footsteps echoed up to the room, quickly followed by the sound of the front door opening and then slamming shut. Despite the pain that was now radiating in his cheek and through the rest of his face, his own situation wasn't what he was worried about. He had been slapped harder by stronger people and stayed standing. The only reason he fell was because he wasn't expecting it. Neither was he expecting Lucy to run out of the house like she did.
She ran out of the house. And she didn't bother telling anyone where she was going.
Immediately, the boy got up and gave chase, ignoring the stinging sensation in his cheek. He jumped down the stairs and whizzed out the front door. The first thing he noticed was that no one's bikes or scooters or roller blades/skates were missing, meaning that wherever she went, she ran. He stopped at the side of the road and looked in both directions. Nothing. Lucy was quick on her feet, but not that quick so she had to still be close to the house. Where would she go though?
Lincoln's first instinct was to look up in the tree, but she wasn't up there. Not to mention, her black clothes would stand out too much in the bright green of the leaves. He ran around the left side of the house and jumped the fence into the backyard. Again, Lincoln checked in the tree, hoping he would find her there. Nothing. Not even a hint of a black dress that might have been snagged on a branch.
The more Lincoln ran around, outside and inside the house, the fewer places he could think of as to where Lucy may have been. It wasn't like she could just disappear, right? Then again, this was Lucy. She could sneak into a room without anyone noticing and scare the living daylights out of all of them if she so wanted. If she could do that, then certainly she could also slip away, anywhere, completely unnoticed. Besides, there was still one place that Lincoln had yet to look. If she wasn't there, then she must have been... Lincoln didn't want to finish that thought.
He walked around to the side of the house where the criss-cross structure of the side of the porch met the wall of the house. Right after the boundary line there was a square wooden plank that had been painted white. Lincoln knelt down and removed the door-like object, revealing what was basically more storage for their pack-rat family. Slowly, he crawled inside, musty air hitting him in the face. It wasn't just the smell either, he could feel the chill surrounding him and it made him shiver, goosebumps forming on his entire body. How Lucy was comfortable down here, assuming she was even down here, was beyond him.
The boy crawled in further to investigate, being forced to remain on his hands and knees as he traveled deeper into the darkness of their home. Finally, after crawling for what seemed like an eternity, he heard sniffling. He didn't exactly have to take a wild guess at who it was. Lincoln came right up next to the duchess of darkness and wrapped one arm around her, almost immediately, she leaned into his side.
She didn't understand why she wanted this. Her entire life she had always thought that what she needed the most was to be alone, but she could never have been more wrong, especially in this situation. The two of them didn't say a word to each other. They just remained in the cold dark underbelly of the beast that is the Loud House. Lucy was glad that her brother was alive, despite her actions saying otherwise. She wouldn't have had it any other way, and neither would Lincoln.
Okay. So, I started writing this chapter with the intention of doing the rest of the siblings except for Lori (because I've got big plans for her) and Lily, because she wasn't part of the dream. But I didn't do that and I will tell you all why in the next chapter, which, btw, will be the last chapter of this story and also probably the longest chapter I've ever written, like... in all of my stories.
Anyway. If you leave a review, don't be hateful, however I do appreciate constructive criticism and whatever... Huge bombshell coming at the Author's note of the next chapter.
