Does anybody know Lula's last name, by any chance? I can't recall it being mentioned, though for some reason I thought it was Lula May, but I can't find her last name online.

This was supposed to be only about the throw-away line when Lula first meets the Horsemen and compares them to her family by saying "Well, my Mom stabbed my Dad in the neck so you are a little like my family. It was an accident, of course. At least, I think it was an accident." And it kind of spiraled into a whole backstory.

Category: Gen
Setting: Pre-NYSM2
Characters/Pairings: Lula
Ratings/Warnings: T, minor spoilers for NYSM2
Summary: There was never much hope that Lula would make it in life.

Never Much Hope

She never thought of herself as having a bad childhood. Sure they had never been able to afford a nice home and had always rented an apartment that only had one bedroom so she had to sleep behind a curtained off portion of the main room. And sure the apartment didn't always have running water or electricity and the walls were beginning to mold and threatened to collapse anytime you walked too heavily, but did that really matter? Lula never thought so. After all, they had a roof over their heads and most of the time they had food on the table and they were all together, so what more could she want?

Her parents were supportive of her love of magic and had even spent some of their meager savings to buy her first magic kit. They were almost always too busy trying to find a job or working the odd jobs nobody else wanted to watch her perform, but by age twelve they let her perform on the streets near their home. It took some time and a lot of practice, but she soon was bringing in some extra cash which she put to paying the bills and to buy more props. Her parents even helped her with her tricks at night. It was her dad was the one who had suggested pulling a hat out of a rabbit and after several years and five rabbits, Lula had perfected that particular trick.

And she knew her mom never meant to stab her dad in the neck. At least, she didn't think so. After all, Lula had been watching from her corner of the room and she could have sworn she saw her mom trip and fall over her dad. It was just bad luck that her mom had been carrying the large knife even though it had been hours since supper. And besides, it was her mom who ordered Lula to call 911 as she used her hands to try and stop the bleeding, even though she wasn't sure what she was doing and the blood had continued to arch across the room.

The cops didn't believe them, though, and when her dad died from blood loss, her mom was carted off to prison and Lula was placed into the foster system. Even then, she didn't think she had it that bad. None of her many foster parents had been abusive or perverts, they just hadn't known what to do with a magic obsessed teenager. So when she left the system after she turned eighteen, she had nothing but good things to say about her childhood.

Still, she knew that no one ever held much hope for her in life. The councilor in high school had tried to convince her to apply to a college because being a magician wasn't the most secure career in the world. When the councilor realized that Lula was never going to change her mind, he just gave up and moved on to other students. Lula didn't mind. She had already grown as a magician and had thankfully moved past pulling a hat out of a rabbit. Her mother still encouraged her during Lula's monthly prison visits, and even if no one else held much hope for her to succeed, Lula did. Still, she was stuck on the streets performing, and what few gigs she did manage to get were never to more than twenty or so people. Regardless of the turn out, she kept at it. After several years of performing for tips with no steady employment, however, even her mom told her it was time to quit living a fantasy and get a real job.

Lula simply ignored her and all the other naysayers and continued performing. But after nearly a decade watching other magicians hit it big while she was stuck in the same place, even she was beginning to lose hope that she would ever make it anywhere. And then the tarot card came with an address and a picture of an Eye and she quite literally squealed with joy on a busy Boston street corner. The tasks were nothing compared to what the Horsemen had done just months before, but Lula didn't care. She was just thrilled to have finally made it. When her last task was complete and she was welcomed into the Eye by none other than Special Agent Dylan Rhodes, she flipped. And when he told her she was to be a Horseman, she nearly passed out.

Now, she knew Dylan had ordered her not to contact the other Horsemen even if she somehow ran into them, but Lula had never been able to contain her excitement well. So she did what she believed any sane person would do and swiped Dylan's phone in order to use it to find the Horsemen. Unfortunately, Dylan was a lot more perceptive then his FBI persona made him appear and she had only been able to find information on Daniel Atlas before she had to make it look like the phone had merely slipped from his pocket. Which it had, just with a little added help. With Dylan gone back to do his FBI thing, Lula was easily able to track down Atlas. She had been hoping to meet Jack—who wouldn't, after all?—but Atlas would do until Dylan properly introduced her.

Putting on her best outfit, Lula studied herself in the mirror. No one ever held much hope for her ever making it in the world, but look at her now: a member of the Eye, on her way to impress J. Daniel Atlas, and soon to be the newest member of the Horsemen. If that wasn't making it big then she didn't know what was. Grinning at her reflection, she locked her apartment behind her and prepared to blow the socks off the Horsemen.