Picking up the Pieces - Chapter 3
the deep-cut forbidden desire
plane-theory
5
(Warning, heavy angst ahead in this one - this one is a little much, even for me)
(this chapter won't make sense unless you read chapter 2 of Repressed Memories first)
Lucy couldn't think. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't focus. The panic had suffocated her, forcing her flight or fight response. Through a daze, she could see the multitude of different emotions that flashed across her brother's face.
Confusion.
Realization.
Regret.
Sorrow.
The boy had stammered out an apology, not that Lucy had comprehended or even heard the apology, before zipping out of the room. The animalistic panic that had set in earlier was slowly subsiding, letting her thoughts slowly ebb back into her mind.
Lucy Loud was not a crier.
But she was still a child.
The mental damage from being assaulted, betrayed unconsciously by the one person she trusted above all else, and the unearthing of a deep-stated taboo desire would have been enough for anyone's emotions to get the better of them, and she was ultimately a vulnerable, 9 year old child.
No matter how mature she was, anyone would cry in the situation she found herself in.
Lucy's tiny body curled into herself, grasping her knees with her arms. She shivered and trembled and sniffled as liquid freely flowed from her exposed eyes. She had never felt so small. So weak. So powerless. Her hands unconsciously traced the bruise marks on her throat as her cries and sobs quieted somewhat.
She knew that Lincoln wasn't in his right mind, but she unconsciously feared him after the events of this afternoon. Lucy's thoughts were interrupted by a paper being slid under the door. She heard footfalls walking away from her room, and she finally allowed herself to breathe again, staring at the folded piece of paper.
She knew who had slid the paper under the door. She could roughly guess that there was an apology written on that paper. She tried to will herself to pick up the message, but every time she started to push herself off the floor, the crazed image of Lincoln, eyes shut, mouth open, shouting in rage, flashed in front of her eyes. His hands were rough and angry, intent on choking the life out of her. Dominating her. Every time the image of Lincoln came up, angry and unyielding, another sob welled up in her chest.
Lucy unconsciously put her own hands on her throat, placing her small fingers into the large bruise marks blossoming on her neck. She let out a low pitched whine, tightening the grip on her own neck as a memory of the horrid event played in front of her eyes. She didn't know how to feel. Part of her was disgusted, angry, and fearful of her brother and the monster that she saw him as, and another part of her was disgusted with herself, with her deep hidden desire for Lincoln to have done more.
Lucy suddenly felt bile welling up as that last thought crossed her mind. She bursted out of her room and ran straight towards the bathroom, vomiting in the toilet. She felt her knees on the cool tile of the bathroom floor, her arms grasping the porcelain, as she emptied the contents of the meager breakfast she had eaten that morning. Once the urge to vomit had passed, she let go of the toilet and fell backwards onto her bottom, her knees contorting to bring herself to a sitting position.
Lucy didn't know how long she sat there, filled with a mixture of fear, sadness, and self-loathing. Her thoughts swirled in her head, threatening to overwhelm her. Suddenly, Lucy heard a loud knock on the bathroom door. She yelped, shooting up like a startled cat.
"Gothic sibling unit, I require the use of these facilities." Lisa's voice could be heard behind the door.
In an odd sort of way, Lucy was relieved that the one to knock on the door was Lisa. Her cool and detached voice calmed the raging fire inside her head. "Yeah I-ill be right out Lisa." Lucy said shakily, cursing the quiver that crossed her voice. She looked in the mirror, wiping away the tear streaks and fixing her hair, hiding her red-rimmed eyes.
"Sibling unit, are you crying? I detect irregularities in your voice." Lisa had switched on her scientific voice, the one she used when she was trying to wheedle answers or information from someone.
Lucy hated that voice. It made her feel like a specimen, like every single aspect of her was being observed and recorded for a purpose that she didn't know. "No, I'm just fine in here Lisa, just fell over, that's a-all." Lucy cursed the stutter that entered her voice at the very last second.
Lucy could almost feel the raised eyebrow of Lisa through the door. "Ooookay…" Lisa said. Behind the door Lucy imagined the diminutive girl with her arms crossed, a skeptical look on her face. Despite everything, Lucy managed to crack a smile at that thought. Staring at the mirror, Lucy was faced with another dilemma. Her neck. Ugly purple bruises in the shape of hands had appeared, and she had no idea how to hide them. Her thoughts raced, when she heard another knock on the door by Lisa.
Before Lisa could say anything else, Lucy busted the bathroom door open, covering her neck with her hands, and dashed across the hallway back to her room. Looking back, she saw Lisa with her mouth open, undoubtedly about to drop a verbal barb, before she sighed and walked into the bathroom, closing the door.
Now back in her room, the feeling of nausea and bile subsided and Lucy felt like she could finally think clearly for the first time in a while. Grabbing her notebook, she hopped onto her bed, pen in hand to write some poetry.
A minute passed, and Lucy held the pen, staring at the paper, unmoving.
Two minutes passed and Lucy couldn't think of anything.
Three minutes passed, and Lucy felt as if she had chewed through the whole pen.
Five minutes passed, and Lucy hung off her bed, trying to get the creative juices flowing.
At the ten minute mark, Lucy abruptly screeched in frustration, throwing the book against the door. Breathing heavily, the headache and anxiety had returned, the frustration in her head clouding her rational thought. Turning her face into her pillow, she screamed again, the sound muffled by the cloth. Lucy shouted and screamed and cried into the pillow, letting all of her emotions out.
The anger and frustration that had been pooling in her stomach was gone, replaced with a despondent emptiness. Her tear ducts seemed to be empty, with her small, infrequent sobs being dry. Lucy eventually pushed herself off her bed, sitting at the edge of the bed. She looked at her notebook, lying on the floor in front of the door.
Walking over to pick up the notebook, Lucy's eyes were drawn towards the paper on the floor. The emptiness in her stomach was slowly being replaced with apprehension, her gut twisting and turning in knots.
She felt like she was moving through honey or molasses, her legs moving at a snail's pace towards the paper. Reaching the paper, her arm extended, and in one swoop, she grabbed the paper and quickly scanned it.
I'm sorry.
I failed you in every sense of the word.
Nothing I say could ever justify what I did to you today.
I have to confess something.
I think I might have some problems with my head.
Sometimes I hear this voice and I have this unexplained gap in my memory, and I get jumpy and panicked for no reason.
This does not excuse what I did, and I hate myself for my actions.
I understand if you want some distance from me, but just know that I love you.
The worst brother,
Lincoln Loud.
Lucy saw the dried tears on the paper, the faint crinkles from where her brother had clutched the paper too hard, and the jagged rip in the left margin of the paper, signifying where the paper had been separated from the notebook it was in. Her fingers brushed over the words, soaking them in.
Her eyes drifted towards the end of the message, running her hand over Lincoln's signature, she traced her fingers around the tear stains on the paper, and her breath hitched as her hand hovered over three words in particular.
I love you.
Lucy subconsciously knew that her brother meant it in a platonic sense, out of a sense of duty as her older brother. As for Lucy herself, she really didn't know how she felt about her brother. Sure she loved him like a sibling, but in recent times there was a small, nagging, presence in the back of her head that yearned for more, something that Lucy couldn't understand under normal circumstances, never mind the frazzled and damaged mental state that she found herself in now.
For a second, she allowed her mind to wander, fantasizing about her brother, reveling in the forbidden and terrible nature of her desire. Her thoughts swam, and she imagined her brother on top of her once again, hands reaching for her neck, a dark smile on his face-
Lucy's eyes shot wide open. Her free hand had been unintentionally clenched into a fist, and she spun around and punched the wall in an attempt to calm down, to erase these depraved thoughts, to make herself feel normal again. Her face paled and her breathing quickened. She could feel the panic setting in, imagining the cold and dark face of her brother as imaginary hands closed in on her neck. This time, however, her brother did not have a smile on his face, but a look of deep disgust and loathing.
Lucy recoiled against the look of sheer hatred that dream Lincoln was giving her. She tried to explain, to apologize for these feelings but nothing came out.
Her brother's face had morphed into a cruel smirk, and a mocking voice emitted from the boy. "You fucking freak. You are sick and deranged, and I hate you."
Lucy was paralyzed. The words struck her heart directly, and even if she knew that it wasn't real, the words still hurt all the same. "I-I'm not a freak." she stammered out.
The figure loomed over her, voice booming. "You don't even believe that, you goddamn weirdo!" the figure paused, before splitting into 9 and morphing into the faces and voices of her other sisters.
"Spooky you're one fucked up little girl!" The Lynn look alike shouted in a reproachful voice.
"Stop!" Lucy shouted. "You guys aren't real!" She began to sob again, but her tear ducts had run dry, and the dry sobs irritated her reddened eyes.
"Little dudette, this-like, ain't cool man." In contrast, Luna's doppelganger simply sounded disappointed, and that tone hurt Lucy almost as much.
"No…" Lucy curled into a ball, attempting to shield herself from the verbal barbs.
"I would suggest to you guys that you do not associate with our freak of a sister." Lucy heard the disdain dripping from Lisa's voice. Peeking through her hands, she saw the figures of Lana and Lola, who had presumably been the recipient of Lisa's statement, looking at her with fear and disgust, like she was a particularly strange animal.
"Ummm guys?" Leni's innocent voice gave Lucy a smidgen of hope. "Why are you guys giving Lucy a hard time?"
"Oh, only because the one she wants to give her a hard time is our fucking brother!" Luan exclaimed, giggling. "In fact, I in-cest you join us in shaming this terrible girl!"
Lucy's hope was crushed as even Leni seemed to understand, the innocent smile she was giving to her morphing into a look of horror. Lucy tried to reach out to any of her sisters, looking for comfort, but Lincoln's doppelganger grabbed her wrist, hissing. "Don't infect your sisters with your freakishness." His face contorted. "They don't deserve this, but you do."
The combination of scorn and disgust from each of her sisters collectively broke Lucy. She ran to her desk, rooting around in the drawer, looking for a sharp, tiny object buried in the corner of the drawer. A shaking hand enclosing the blade, Lucy bolted to the bathroom for the second time today, praying that it was empty.
Luckily, the bathroom was empty, and she got inside and slammed the door, locking it. She saw her reflection in the mirror. Her once fixed hair was disheveled, the bangs that normally covered her eyes were thin and stressed, showing her eyes. Her eyes were a puffy red and irritated, but dry. Lucy reflected on her appearance, her mental state trailing downwards as she stared into the mirror.
I look the part of a freak, I guess.
Lucy caught another dry sob in her throat as she squeezed her hand. She let out a slight gasp as the blade in her clenched hand pierced her skin, the pain from the blade taking her out of her self destructive thoughts.
Lucy lowered the lid of the toilet and took a seat on top of it. Grabbing her striped sleeve, she pulled it up, being careful to not get blood on it from the cut on her palm. Lucy stared at her exposed, unblemished pale arm. Self hatred welling up inside of her chest, she held up the razor blade, staring at it. Almost in a trance, she watched the blood bubble in the cut on her palm, the combination of pain and the movement of the blood transfixing her, distracting her from the emotions she had been feeling up until this moment.
Lucy brought the razor closer and closer to her wrist. Suddenly, a small glint caught her attention from the corner of her eye. She narrowed her eyes, seeing a camera mounted on the wall. She suddenly heard footsteps stomping down the hall, and her panic started rising once again.
"Gothic sibling unit please put the razor down!" She heard Lisa's desperate voice from beyond the door. Lucy heard Lisa's small arms pound against the door in vain. "If you don't open this door I will be forced to get someone to tear the door down!"
Lucy didn't respond, she couldn't respond. Her thoughts swirled in her mind, ranging from shame, to anger, to regret. She did not want anyone else knowing about what she was doing. Lucy tried to come up with a solution, but her tired mind gave out on her, and she screamed out as her head throbbed.
"Just wait, gothic sibling unit, I will get one of the older siblings to help!" Lucy heard the pitter patter of Lisa's panicked footfalls on the stairs.
It was all crashing down around her. Lisa would come back with somebody, and they would see her in this state. Lucy briefly considered something worse, something permanent, hovering the razor over the pale blue vein on her wrist. She heard voices and footfalls rapidly ascending the stairs, hearing a voice exclaim, "Slow down with the pulling little dude!"
Resolving herself, Lucy readjusted the razor and slashed down at her underarm, the pain momentarily clearing her mind as she heard pounding on the door. Resigning to her fate, she let go of the razor, the blade clattering on the tile.
Lucy focused on the blood bubbling on her wrist, the movement of the red across her arm calming her down. Her breathing steadied, and she felt the tension leaving her body, but that all changed when the door swung open.
Lucy turned to the doorway, clutching her arm. She saw a panicked Lisa, an expression rarely seen on her face, but looking upwards, she saw Luna, who's emotions were rapidly changing. Lucy saw her initial confusion, then panic, then concern, then she saw her face paling as she saw the blood on her arm and the razor at her feet. Luna lurched forwards, attempting to grab Lucy.
Lucy could see Luna's lips moving, her arm lightly grasping hers, but she couldn't hear anything over the pounding in her head.
It was all too much for poor little Lucy, and the girl passed out, being caught by the aspiring rockstar.
A/N:
… nah I've got no words for this one. Once I started the angst, I couldn't stop.
Next chapter will follow Lincoln and Luan, hashing things out.
Lastly, I do not condone cutting as a good thing, and I implore anyone with harmful thoughts or anyone who is struggling with mental illness to reach out for help, nothing is insurmountable, no matter how hopeless or bleak it may seem.
Answering Reviews -
Angry9guy:
thanks :)
U. N. Owen:
Thanks for the review, yes this story was somewhat inspired by "What She'd been missing" by Trillhouse, but i'm not a super big fan of the Sin Kids, so no, Loan will not be making an appearance in this story. Yes, there will be a lot of drama and angst in the story, even more than there already is. For the last question about the outcome of this story, lets just say that it's not set in stone yet :)
Additionally, to the people that PM'ed me with support or questions, Thank you. It makes me very happy to see that my writing meant something to someone.
Reviews Welcome