#Happy birthday again Jemi--I hope you like this! <3 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

rorykillmore · 7 years ago

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okay so @larkspear wanted a fic for their birthday and told me to surprise them, so... since i’d previously written a wacky good end au(?)/future fic for jemi, i decided to do the same thing here! enjoy a taste of... maria getting something of a happy ending and eventual disaster squad shenanigans.

spear’s birthday was actually yesterday and i meant to get this up then, but i ended up having a lot less time than i’d anticipated. hopefully the timing still works out well and this is a good distraction from Socializing. happy birthday spear!!! meeting you’s easily one of the best things that’s happened to me this year (thanks homecoming) and i really hope this manages to... brighten up your weekend a little. <3

There is something both cathartic and terrifying at once at the prospect of leaving Silent Hill and not looking back. Lucille clamps down on the fear that she might waver or crumble without it. It’s a silly thing to think, really -- perhaps, in a sense, her time in the town helped her come to terms with things, but she could not attribute all of her personal growth to it. Lately, after all, it had been doing more harm than good. No, she would move past this, the same way she had moved past so many other things she had once clung to relentlessly. She would be... if not alright (most days that still seemed out of reach), something different. Better than this.

The same would extend to Maria. Lucille repeats this to herself every time that old worry creeps up on her again, much more fresh and difficult to ignore than her concern for her own well-being. Truth be told, there is still so much she doesn’t know about Maria. So much, she realizes now, that Maria does not yet know about herself.

Change can be dangerous, even if she has worked to teach herself not to reject it on principle.

For a time, they endure their journey towards the town’s borders in silence, the weight of what they’re doing hanging over them like an almost tangible presence. Lucille, understanding all too well how daunting and impossible moving forward can feel, still can’t imagine she knows just what’s going on in Maria’s head. She hardly trusts herself with knowing the right thing to say -- she can only hope that her presence by itself is, in some capacity, soothing. She is not leaving. They’re leaving together.

So it’s only when Maria herself breaks the silence that Lucille stirs and meets her gaze as levelly as she can.

“Lucille,” Maria begins, her voice strangely tight. “Do you think...”

There’s painful silence, but Lucille waits patiently for her to find the proper words.

“What if we leave, and I don’t --”

This time, she recognizes that this is as far as Maria’s getting -- and she cannot call it an irrational fear, not when she herself has wondered the same thing the many times she’s considered asking Maria to come with her, not when they don’t know.

“We can’t know what’s going to happen,” she admits that aloud, slow and careful. Lying, even to make either of them feel better, would feel a little like a betrayal. “Not for certain. ...But you want to leave, don’t you?”

Maria hesitates to respond, as if she herself isn’t sure -- but when she speaks, her voice has a telling edge of something fierce and desperate, if not certain. “Yeah. I do.”

“That feeling is yours.” Lucille keeps her tone measured and calm and firm, though there’s a certain intensity sparking in her gaze. “And it’s real. And if that’s real, then -- so are you.”

She realizes as she says it that she believes it unwaveringly. Whatever this town might think (if it can think) or do, whatever happens next -- Maria is real, in the ways that should matter most. Perhaps that’s some small defiance on its own.

Maria looks a little too overcome to respond, and for all her resolve, Lucille can’t help but feel just slightly abashed -- it’s not a bad feeling, but it’s one she doesn’t know yet to do with, this... having a positive effect on people. She keeps her expression set but looks away -- and just in time. They’ve reached Silent Hill’s southern limits.

Well, she thinks, her heart pounding. This is it. Either a beginning or an ending.

Perhaps both.

They come to a halt almost simultaneously, just a few steps from the sign that marks the road out of town. She hears Maria draw a shuddering breath. Somehow, Lucille thinks delaying any further might only make things more difficult, but she wonders whether there’s something else she ought to say. In case...

She banishes that thought before she can finish it, and instead does something even more unprecedented. She holds out a hand.

It only takes Maria a moment to work through her hesitation, looking briefly taken aback. And then she takes it, clinging a little too tightly, but Lucille swallows back her own instinctive unease and allows her to. If the worst should happen --

-- if the very worst should happen, she doesn’t want Maria to feel alone.

In silent, mutual agreement, they cross the border together.

They wait awhile for certainty to set in. That nothing will go wrong, that Maria will be alright, that they will never need to return. Lucille can’t shake the creeping, instinctive expectation of pain and loss even after days, and then weeks, until she begins to wonder whether it’s a part of her that will simply never go away.

She supposes she’s endured much worse. What matters, really, is that Maria has this time at all -- this opportunity to carve a place for herself in this world with unsteady hands, to... make an effort to discern just who she is, however long and tremulous a process that may be.

Lucille wants to comfort her, sometimes, and tell her that she’s still trying to figure out who she is, too. She can never quite find the words.

But they need to begin somewhere, so they do. Granted, she hadn’t anticipated that ‘somewhere’ being a boutique in Manhattan, but they pass it one day on their way to the rifter meeting place (Lucille had thought that as good a place for Maria to begin to establish herself as any) when Maria stalls, hesitating, her gaze caught on the window display.

Lucille considers the scene quizzically for a moment. It isn’t entirely what she’s come to associate as Maria’s style, but --

-- she realizes the implications of that suddenly, and falters.

“You might as well go in,” she suggests once she’s composed herself. “It won’t do you any harm to look.”

She’ll be damned if she hasn’t become particularly skilled in the art of reinvention, by now.

And so it begins. The first time, Maria only purchases a different shade of eyeshadow and matching nail polish, but it’s something. A start. A change. The next time, it’s a different shop, a pair of shoes she likes, the heels a little lower than the ones she usually wears -- Lucille talks her into an outfit to go along with them.

It’s one thing at a time, a mismatched and not always consistent process, building your own identity. Still, Lucille finds that the whole thing makes her smile a little more often than she’s used to. What a strange sort of thing to connect with another person over.

But then, she reflects, she may not be the best judge -- she’s still not very used to connecting at all.

One day and quite out of the blue, Maria asks her to go camping.

Lucille has to admit, she is more than minutely taken aback.

Camping. Somehow, she doesn’t see the appeal. The few days she spent out west on the trail had been - if necessary and somewhat enlightening - not particularly enjoyable, at least in all that they had exposed her to the elements. Granted, she is less concerned with all of that than she is with Maria herself.

“What possessed you to want to attempt that?” she inquires as non-dubiously as she is capable of.

Maria shrugs loosely, playing with a stray lock of hair to deflect. “I don’t know. I was reading about it. It just... seemed like something different.”

“Different?” Lucille echoes. She more feels her eyebrows lift than does it intentionally.

“Different from --” Maria breaks off, avoiding her gaze. “...It’s something I’ve never done before.”

Lucille watches her carefully, understanding slowly clicking into place. She decides not to do Maria the discourtesy of voicing it aloud when it’s something she herself is reluctant to do, but -- it must be a little like the clothes, she thinks.

Different.

It’s still far from overly appealing, but she recognizes the importance in it. Truthfully, she would be willing to endure worse for such a cause.

“Camping,” she repeats dryly. “Well, I suppose.”

Perhaps it’s naive of her to imagine it might end there. Because it’s other things after that -- Maria finds Lucille’s music one day, and asks her what she plays and whether she can teach her all in one breath. It startles Lucille a little more than it ought to -- she’s only just begun to toy with the concept of touching the piano again, after all (there are so very many terrible memories attached to such a thing -- but she thinks she cares enough to try and reclaim it for herself, if she can).

When she mentions as much aloud, Maria falters a little at the word piano.

Lucille offers to teach her French instead.

From there, they somehow spiral into it together: a whirlwind of trying new things, moving from hobby to hobby, trying to discern which things Maria enjoys and which she is good at. Lucille can’t quite articulate it aloud, but she knows less than she would like to about herself, as well.

This... concept of simply spending the day out enjoying things. It’s so simple, and yet so foreign to her. With Maria there, she can’t admit to fearing she may not manage it -- which is, perhaps, a good thing.

Contrary to popular belief, however, Lucille does recognize a disaster when she sees one in the making. After Maria signs them up for a televised cooking competition, she does the only thing she can think of.

She appeals to Edith.

Edith, who very visibly tries not to smile at her, and after a moment of absorbing it all, manages to ask, “Which... channel did you say it was on?”

Lucille cannot fathom why she had expected anything different.

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’re not -- I’ve no intention of allowing her to go through with it. Can you imagine?”

Edith looks as though she’s having a little too much fun imagining.

“Just,” Lucille presses, quite keen on putting an end to that. “Help me divert her attention to something less...”

“Disastrous?” Edith tries.

“Please.”

It’s not for lack of trying. Edith suggests bowling -- bowling, really; Lucille might have suspected her of trying to sabotage them. If that is the case, however, then it backfires. Maria apparently harbors a startlingly vehement distaste for bowling.

They end up doing the cooking show. Lucille suspects it’s infinitely worse with the three of them than it might have been otherwise.

Of all things, however, the dynamic sticks. Two years ago, Lucille would not have imagined - would not have remotely considered - that her preferred company might consist of Edith Cushing and a woman who abruptly broke into her home once.

And yet, here they are. This world is truly the most absurd of places.

Water activities, Lucille very quickly learns, are dangerous -- she is quite certain she will never desire a reprise of their brief attempt at white water rafting. They do visit the beach almost semi-regularly, once Lucille has properly chosen to live nearby, but thankfully Maria expressed an interest in parasailing only once.

Most days, she pokes around the shoreline trying cotton candy or being recruited for volleyball, while Edith contents herself with reading the latest thing she’s picked up and Lucille struggles to keep away the sun with the very modern appliance of a sunhat and sunglasses so ridiculously sized that they practically cover half her face (modern women; really).

At least two separate children mistake her for a woman called ‘Esmé Squalor’. Somehow, she doesn’t feel as though that’s a compliment.

Still, she learns to endure these daily peculiarities with level tolerance, at the very least -- some days, it’s almost closer to affection. Time passes. Lucille adopts a pair of cats (the shelter told her they’re too neurotic to be separated, and one of them only has three legs. She’s fairly certain they’re the most dysfunctional felines to have ever existed. Perfect, then.). She lets Maria name one of them.

All in all, it’s...

She can’t be certain any of them even remember what happy looks like (or if she and Maria ever even knew to begin with). But perhaps...

It’s a start, anyway. A beginning after all.

In the end, she admits to herself, it was worth letting go.

#this is the strangest combination of painful and ridiculous ive ever written js #also we were literally talking about them like. leaving silent hill yesterday #and i was trying SO HARD TO KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT #fic

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