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swinging-stars-from-satellites · 2 years ago

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"I didn't know you were there," says Lucy, hesitant but curious. Quill stops what he's doing, sets down a box. He frowns, moves to check an item off of Holly's neatly written list.

"I've been here all morning," he replies bemusedly. "Would have thought you'd notice, with how the lot of you tend to gripe about my very breathing." He says it complainingly, but with the slightest air of a smile.

Lucy shakes her head and quirks her lips, as if thinking. "That's not what I mean. Lockwood said something the other day, that you were here the night... when Jessica died." She looks away, hiding her questioning gaze. Even now, Lockwood can be cagey about his past, and she tries not to press him too much.

Kipps makes a noncommittal sound and shrugs stiffly. "I wasn't here when it happened," he says slowly. "I was... too late."

In the golden early-afternoon sunshine of the hall, his face almost looks soft, wistful. Lucy moves closer, sensing a shift in the mood. She knows vaguely that he'd known Jessica before her death, but she's not sure how well.

"I could tell you about it, if you wanted," he continues softly. "It's... there are many things I wish I could change."

"Mmhmm," Lucy hums reassuringly. She leans over to check Holly's list herself, picks up a box of her own. "Would you maybe write it down for me?" She asks, then grimaces at her own insensitivity. "For the casebooks, I mean, the history."

Quill gives her a look. "Me?" He asks, brow furrowed.

Lucy nods. "Everyone's written something," she says, "Even Hol. But even Lockwood hasn't written much about Jessica. If you wanted, that could be your entry."

He stares at her, unsure, for a long moment. Before he can say anything, George comes stomping through with a heavy-laden garbage bag, grumbling all the way and followed by a particularly chipper Holly, who asks how the tidying is going on her way past. In between the movement and bustle, Kipps catches Lucy's eye past Holly's neatly braided hair.

He nods just once, but with certainty. Lucy nods back and smiles a hesitantly sad smile.

~~~~~

In a world where the dead can walk and must be staved off by children with swords, timing is everything. Back then, I didn't know that the way I do now. Timing was for prompt attacks on a Spectre, planning an evening to catch a Phantom by surprise. Nor did I even truly know that I was a child, and only now do i truly feel such. Funny, how as a child I felt like a grown-up, but as a man I feel like a child.

My name, for this record, is Quill Kipps. I've been asked to write this down as it may matter later on as a historical record, though why this tale is of import I don't know. Perhaps it's a cautionary tale. Much of my later exploits have already been taken down by my colleague, Lucy Carlyle of the now-esteemed Lockwood and Co. psychic agency. However, difficult as it is, Ms. Carlyle has requested that I tell my own perspective of the events preceding my days as a supervisor of the Fittes agency and later in solving the most pivotal case of most people's lives alongside Lockwood & Co. It is the story of how I, a child at the time, learned something of timing.

I was seven minutes too late. That was all it took for my life — and, I'm sorry, that sounds selfish now I've written it down, but this is in ink, so shall we say — how two lives, one of which was mine, were irrevocably changed. Back then, both of us would have said they were ruined. But we both survived, as most people do, and I think have both finally come to be glad of that fact.

Only agents walk freely after dark. Curfews take affect, and fear even before that, meaning most adults take to their homes, iron-fortified and scented of lavender, at the first sign of sunset. Most of them likely haven't even seen a sunset in years. That's particularly sad, I think. There's so much beauty after light, and so few can ever see it.

Adults, who cannot detect Visitors, live in more fear even than those who can see, or in some cases, such as that of the esteemed Ms. Carlyle, hear them. Funny how the lack of knowing makes things so much more terrifying. After dark the only living human forms to be seen are those who a century ago would have been considered small and vulnerable, but who now protect their elders from horrors they're blind to. I know what it's like to be blind. I have walked both sides. But that isn't what this is about.

I didn't have a case that night. My team had the night off after a serious domestic case the previous evening, one including a feral Poltergeist with a penchant for throwing kitchen knives willy-nilly. Our Listener had taken a deep cut in the process of sealing the Source, and as such our team had been told to take a respite for a weekend, rest and recover with extra time that we often didn't have as part of the largest psychic agency in London. And, amidst the desperate rush of the previous night's haunting, I had realized precisely what I wished to do with that time.

It's difficult for a child, even a teenager as I was, to conceptualize the passage of time. When you're fourteen, you can't think of what your life will be like in a decade. When you are a fourteen year old psychic agent, you can't think of it due to doubts that you will even reach that age. It's a job with a high mortality rate. Any benefits or honor you may receive don't change the fact that you can die, possibly quite alone, at any time in the line of work. This particular night, I wasn't thinking about that, however. I was thinking of a future, vague and hypothetical, clearly far too hopeful, in which I married the girl of my dreams.

Jessica Lockwood was lithe, dark-haired, and had the sweetest smile that I have ever seen to this day — and for the record and for irony's sake, it has indeed been nearly a decade since then. She and her brother, Anthony, who has since made quite the name for himself, were the inheritors of their late parents' house at 35 Portland Row. The late Mr. and Mrs. Lockwood had been researchers and collectors of rare and potentially psychic items from around the globe. Their research had led to an untimely death and orphaning of their children, but it had also led to a connection with the Fittes agency and thus my meeting Jessica, back in those days when I could See Visitors unaided and she was alive.

She was so, so alive. I don't quite know how to describe it. There was a determination about her that gave her a kind of almost glow, a vibrancy that surrounded her and lit up even the most depressing of rooms, even the DEPRAC waiting room I had met her in shortly after her parents lost their lives. Anthony, Tony as Jessica called him, was only nine years old and well on his way to becoming a fully-fledged agent with Sight better than most, possibly even my adolescent self. Jessica, if she had been gifted in Talent, had never made mention of it and thus had not taken up a rapier in the fight against the Problem. Her efforts were focused on her family's home, and the one other person remaining in it.

She was tidying up, as she called it, making a project of her parent's research and the items collected throughout it. I had peeked in on this organization a few times over the past few months that Jessica and I had been seeing each other, but none of the items held any significance to my eyes. A few carried a slight psychic residue, but Tony could have told her that much, and likely did. He never hesitated to speak his mind, albeit often in a roundabout way even then. He certainly spoke his mind about me.

It was understood that Tony and I did not particularly get along. He was somewhat possessive of his sister, which was understandable, and I found him to be pretentious and annoying. Still do, for that matter. However back then we mutually endeavored to keep the peace, for Jessica's sake if nothing else. I would have been honored to be allowed into the family eventually. I think in that moment I was so assured in my love for Jessica that I would have readily given up my work as an agent if she'd asked it, and a part of me knew she would. I would have given up the world for her.

I whistled quietly to myself as I walked down the streets that night. I'd taken a Night Cab to a corner nearby and was just rounding the corner, where a small shop sat for as long as most could remember, to continue down the Row when a wailing came speeding up behind me, preceded and followed by blindingly bright lights. An iron-lined ambulance and two DEPRAC cruisers tore down the road I was headed down, and before the realization had even sunk in I was jogging to catch up out of sheer curiosity. It didn't occur to me until I had already watched them pull to a stop that they could even potentially be going to number 35.

But they did, and even with my own cocksure refusal to understand mortality on a personal level, a chill sank through me even harsher than a ghost-chill or miasma. It made my hands numb; even though I had my rapier, I couldn't have handled it in that moment if I had had to. I sprinted through the gate, past the already rushing medics preparing borderline-overdoses of adrenaline, and when the DEPRAC officers called out ordering me to stop, asking me what I was doing here, I growled that I was a Fittes operative, let me through, I had to get to the scene.

Because I knew even then that there was a scene in the Lockwood house. Adrenaline is the only treatment for ghost-touch and either way this night could go, it was not going to go well. I had been coming to tell the girl of my dreams that I loved her, and now, the realization was hitting me smack in the face that I might instead be either comforting her at her precious little brother's bedside, or telling her goodbye instead.

I was the first to her room, then, closely followed by the DEPRAC people who were then followed by the medics. And all of us were too late. Something, I'm not quite sure what, was cracked on the floor, a dark tear in solid silver that told me a Seal had been broken, and the small dark-haired form of Tony was standing stock-still holding a rapier, but this isn't what any of us was focusing on.

Jessica Lockwood, or by this time, the body of Jessica Lockwood, lay silently on her own bed. There was no blood, no signs of physical struggle, but there never was in cases like this. She should never have been a case, not like this. If it weren't for the fear and pain on her face, a twisting that my heart easily matched upon seeing it, she could have been safely asleep. The ghost-touch must have been acute, a wrap of faintly glowing arms, and Jessica's death near immediate, because the telltale bloating and bruising of her flesh had only barely begun. They should have brought a hearse truck, not an ambulance.

And the death-glow hovering over her, suffusing the dim room with light to those of us who could see it, was brighter than any I had or to this day have ever seen. It was like a small bit of sunshine, or a star itself, lit up Jessica's bloating body from the inside out, and not simply because I was in love with her, which was true. The light was overwhelming.

Tony was staring at it as well, as the medics began to take protective measures for handling the body. There were ectoplasm stains on the floor near the bed, and near where the boy stood. A thin film coated the edge of his rapier. He was in jeans and a white shirt, half-tucked in but slightly dirty as if he'd been playing outside in the back garden. I forced myself to close my gaping mouth, took a step towards him and forced my heart to untwist.

"Tony," I said, reminding myself how to speak and in particular how to speak to someone in a volatile state, and put a hand on his shoulder.

Tony jerked back away from me. "Don't touch me!" He cried out, and I backed off with my hands in the air. His rapier had swung wildly about when I touched him, coming to rest tremulously near my ribcage.

"Tony, you have to come with me," I said, nervousness and slowly settling grief making it sound far more bossy than I think I really intended. I wanted to get him out of there, away from the body of his sister which was becoming more and more grotesque by the minute, and away from the site where her spirit might return if given a moment's chance. "It's me, Quill."

"I'm not going anywhere with you," he hissed. His eyes were fixed mostly on Jessica's bed, mouth twitching as if he wanted to shout at the medics and officers working to take care of her body, but he glanced at me with such vitriol that it took me aback. "You were too late," he spat, and I flinched at the truthfulness of it.

I cleared my throat, which had suddenly started to close. "I wasn't with them," I told him. "I was coming here to-" and there i stopped, because what use was it telling Tony now? I had missed my chance, and it didn't matter if I had loved her, or how much her little brother had, because those things did not change that she was dead now.

"To what?" The question was asked in such a low tone that it would have frightened me to hear it come from someone so young, if I hadn't been in some kind of shock and struggling just to make it through this conversation and get the boy away from the scene.

I stared at him. In that moment I had never felt more defeated or useless. "I was coming to tell her I loved her," I admitted, helplessly.

"Lot of good that did her," Tony hissed at me after only a second's hesitation, then with one last, lingering look at his sister's death-glow, ran out of the room. I later found out that he ran all the way out of the house, and had to be restrained by a DEPRAC agent in order to be taken to Scotland Yard to give a statement.

I was taken in as well, as I had been on the scene so immediately, and as the long night passed in a sort of numb turmoil, the next I saw of Tony was in a waiting room just like the one where I'd first met Jessica. It was dull and gray and certainly didn't help with the sudden numbness that had come after the shock. I approached the boy slowly, hoping he could see me and wouldn't be startled. I was trying, very hard, to be friendly, but I've never been much good at that.

"I'm-"

"Sorry?" Anthony finished for me, more than a little bitterly. "I knew you'd say that, Quill." He glared at his hands resting on his knees, hands which a couple hours before had had a death grip on a rapier and now were painfully empty.

It struck me that this was a boy with nothing left to hold onto at all, no family left to speak of. He could have been a vengeful spirit himself, for as pale and hollow as he looked in that fluorescent-lit room deep inside Scotland Yard. It was evening now. They couldn't just send him away into the dark, rapier or no rapier. Not back to a house that could be haunted, even as we sat and stood in uncomfortable silence in an all-gray room, by the spirit of the girl we had both loved.

"She loved you too, you know," Tony said quietly, startling me from my numbish reverie. His tone was low and dangerous, something I was then unaccustomed to. Sarcasm, certainly, and taunts, but the delicate anger in his voice that night was something entirely new to me. I would come to know it much better over the years. When he turned to fix his gaze on me, locking me in place just as well as a Visitor's trance, there was a hollow look in his eyes that looked almost dead and nearly made me flinch.

"Why couldn't you have gotten there sooner?" He accused, standing from the cheaply built waiting room chair and coming toe to toe with me despite being then significantly shorter. "It was seven minutes, I counted! You were seven minutes late! Why weren't you there sooner?" The danger in his voice turned ragged toward the end, high-pitched and boyish. I didn't know what to do with that.

I had no reply. I'd had no case that night, no reason to dawdle. I hadn't thought I had dawdled, really, until it was too late. I couldn't let myself think that I had, refused to acknowledge the implication that Jessica's death could have been prevented if I had only picked up my pace by a bit. If I did, the regret, already threatening just beyond the numbness I was slowly emerging from, would overwhelm me. I was only a child, only fourteen. I was equipped to handle Visitors of all kinds, even the dangerous Poltergeist my team had faced earlier in the week, but I was not equipped to handle this any better than nine year old Anthony Lockwood.

I stood my ground against his dark, sad eyes and bitter trembling. This time there was no sword to stab into me if I took a step too close. We were caught, in a standoff, stock-still in that dingy, timeless waiting room with the ghost of Jessica hanging over us, if not literally then very present figuratively speaking. Both of us, I know now, were children. This shouldn't have been our lot; but it was, and despite the grief and the pain, we stood firm in it.

"I'm sorry, Tony," I said stiffly, though genuine. I couldn't force my mouth to form the words any more gently while shouting and fighting inside and knowing that he wouldn't accept it either way. I was always going to take his sister from him, one way or another. None of us ever thought it would be like this, though.

He glared harder, tipped up his chin at me. Even then a bit of hair flopped over his eyes. "Don't call me Tony," he snapped, then whirled away, arms crossed. "It's just Lockwood, now."

"Is it?" I sniped back, as if on autopilot. I nearly didn't realize the snide words had come out of my mouth until he replied.

"Only one of my name," he said. He only faltered a little, but the similarities to Jessica were enough that I could see it. I didn't acknowledge it, though. That would be something too close, too painful, and there was no safe way to let this scene turn into that from where we were just then. "I dealt with it, even DEPRAC agrees. The Visitor-" and here, his voice definitely shook. The Visitor that killed Jessica. "The Visitor is well gone. I could start my own agency, if I wanted." He tightened his arms around himself, another tell that I refused to see.

I was horribly selfish then, and for a long while afterwards. Sometimes I still am. Sometimes, I regret that. I have a lot of things I regret.

"Good luck," I told him, after a long, suddenly chilly silence. A DEPRAC inspector, Barnes, was coming down the hall. My self-imposed responsibility, to not let Tony be alone on this night, was ended. I would go home and curl onto my bed, fully clothed, and tremble until the dawn came. I would make tea and pretend that I could taste what kind it was. I would not concern myself with a boy who was not my responsibility, even if I'd come very close to having him for a brother once upon a time. Those hypotheticals were out of reach now, and the fact of that was all too quickly sinking in. I didn't want to be around people when the lingering shock fully faded.

I turned at the door, passing by Barnes as he entered the room and cleared his throat for Tony's attention. I looked over my shoulder and made a momentary eye contact with Jessica's little brother, the only connection to her still alive in this world. I thought of her just a few hours before, alive and well and glowing with life, now nothing but a death-glow in her own bedroom. I swallowed hard, gave Tony a firm nod. "I'm sorry," I said once more, and didn't stay long enough to hear any reply he may have made.

I cried it again, later, staring into the dark of the night unable to sleep. "I'm sorry," I whispered, as if Jessica could still hear me. Her room was being filled with lavender and reinforced with iron and silver at that very moment. There was no chance, or at least very little, that she would return. To this day I don't think I knew if I wished she would or wouldn't. For my sake and for Tony's, now I'm glad that she didn't. I'm not sure either of us would have survived that.

I'm not sure of the purpose of this record, except that I hope I can give a warning to those who may one day read it. Life does not last forever the way we think it does as kids. As an adult now, I feel both older and younger than I've ever been. I was seven minutes too late for the girl that I loved more than I believe I really knew how to love. It isn't all that much. Just seven minutes for a life to be lost and two more to nearly follow. Timing is everything, and I missed mine. I hope that others will not make the same mistake.

~~~~~

Lucy reads through the story slower than she usually would for anyone or anything else and only looks at Kipps again once she's gotten to the end. He won't look at her, staring staunchly at some teasing doodle on the Thinking Cloth. There's a heaviness in the air. Holly appears at the threshold of the kitchen for a moment, seems to take stock, and moves on without hardly a noise. If Lucy hadn't been facing her, she wouldn't have even known Holly had been there.

She holds the pages carefully in her hands for a moment longer before handing them back to Quill. "The last paragraph," she begins quietly.

It's fading afternoon again, golden hour a few days after she first brought up the question of Jessica to him. He'd knocked at the front door earlier in the day even though Lockwood had faux-reluctantly given an open invitation, and a spare key, over a snacking smorgasbord during the few days they'd spent organizing and painting Jessica's room and a few others. With Lockwood and George out, presumably to chat with Flo or scrape up some research, 35 Portland Row is quietly peaceful.

Lucy and Kipps both have cups of tea in front of them; Kipps has mostly drained his, possibly just for something to do, and Lucy's has started to go cold. She stares into the liquid, tapping the side of her cup with a quiet ringing tick noise. The silence, once awkward and anxious, sits with them and they let it. Eventually, Lucy looks at Kipps and he automatically looks back at her.

"The last paragraph," she repeats quietly. "Is that for him?" She means Lockwood, of course. Of course Quill would notice the closeness between the two of them, that Lockwood seems sure to continue as he is without addressing it.

Quill shrugs. "Maybe," he says. "I wrote it down because you asked," he tells her, with more earnestness than she had honestly expected. Kipps is a dear friend these days. He's also still often abrasive and detached by habit. "But maybe the whole thing is for him, really," he admits.

Lucy thinks of his own words: very close to a brother, once upon a time. She nods solemnly. "Thank you," she says softly. Quill nods back, and manages a hesitant, sad smile in return.

#SO ANYWAY I GUESS I HAVE FEELINGS #in typical fashion I managed to switch both tenses and POV and ALSO make this somehow both pre and post canon #which i think is pretty prestigious. if i do say so myself #but aldjdlsnfjsj yeah emotions. gonna crosspost this to ao3 in the morning probably???#need to decide on a title but the song i kept listening to during this was i hope by we are the guests. so there's that #Lu writes #lockwood & co #L&c #quill kipps #songbird babe this is for you bc you're the one who got the idea of kipps/jessica into my head in the first place #any typos will be edited out uhhhh later

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