Chapter Text
The second Carlyle woke, Barnes realized he could move again. It seemed the magic in the room released them all at once. Wade was already on her radio calling the clinic for transport. It was nice he did not have to give her an order for her to know what he wanted. Lockwood had Carlyle in a recovery position faster than blinking when she got sick over the edge of her bed.
“Lucy,” called the vampire, “It’s over now, Lucy. You’ll be alright.”
He could hear the concern lacing the words. Carlyle did not seem able to respond – instead, she whimpered in pain before her eyes slipped shut as she lost consciousness.
“How long until transport can get here?” he asked Wade, deciding to deal with the most important thing first.
“Less than 10,” answered Wade immediately.
He nodded. “Tell them to hurry.”
“I did.”
“Good.” And now for the other problem in the room.
Despite having been terrified he would hurt her only seconds prior, Lockwood seemed glued to Carlyle’s side. He had two fingers pressed against the pulse point on her neck – his other hand wrapped around her wrist with fingers splayed over the same there.
“That transport needs to get here fast,” fretted the vampire without taking his attention off of Carlyle. “Her blood pressure is low – I think she’s going into shock.”
He frowned. “How’d you know that?” he asked.
“I can feel it,” offered Lockwood, still without looking up. “She needs help now.”
“I’m going to get the medical kit,” piped up Karim from behind Wade. He disappeared down the stairs before anyone could give him a response.
It turned out they did not need whatever medical kit these three kept on hand, because Karim came back leading the DSRAC paramedic team. The vampire released Carlyle’s care to them without a fuss; he had been expecting him to demand to stay with her.
…
“You won’t need to force those medical checkups on Lucy or George anymore, Inspector.”
Barnes glanced over at the form of the vampire sitting in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the waiting room outside the clinic. Lockwood had his head in his hands, fingers threaded through his hair, poised to tear it all out in frustration. Yet he had sat in the same position, unmoving and dejected since they arrived. Karim had been unable to take the atmosphere in the room, and left for a short walk to clear his head a few minutes ago.
Carlyle’s condition was as-yet unknown – Dr. Bowman had been frowning when they brought her in. The man was unfailingly optimistic. It was never a good sign when they saw him frown.
“What makes you say that?” he asked in the silence that followed the declaration. This ought to be good.
“As soon as Lucy’s stable, I’m leaving,” declared Lockwood.
He frowned at the top of the vampire’s head. “Is that so?”
“…I let her get too close to me…I knew I shouldn’t…and yet, I still let it happen…” mumbled Lockwood to himself. “…If I had just taken her to the clinic instead of the house that first time, none of this would have ever happened…”
He studied the vampire’s slumped form for a long time. From what he was able to gather, rescuing magicals and taking them into DSRAC for help was something he did…not often, but regularly. It had not taken long to figure out that Bonnard had been one of those. “Why didn’t you?” he asked as he thought about her.
It was strange that the vampire would take the risk of Carlyle waking up in his house. She must have seen him rescue her, and would likely have realized what he is. It would have been much easier to pass unnoticed if Lockwood had surrendered Carlyle to DSRAC right away; paranoid delusions were easy enough to explain away under the stress of being kidnapped by vampire servants. Even if Carlyle had seen him, she had never needed to know the truth.
“She was terrified and in pain,” offered Lockwood. His voice was muffled; he was still burying his face in his hands. “Waking up in another medical situation would not have helped her calm down. Her magic was all over the place, and needed to be dealt with. I knew George would be able to help her.”
“So would the doctors and nurses we have on hand in the clinic,” he pointed out. “Which you already know. So again, I ask; why did you take Carlyle to your home rather than DSRAC when you rescued her?”
Lockwood did not offer any form of answer for long enough he suspected he was never going to get one. If Lockwood really did leave, he would stop the medical checkups – they were only necessary because of his presence in the same household as Karim and Carlyle. He suspected that no matter Lockwood’s conviction though, he was not actually going to go through with it. Not like that, anyway. If nothing else, Carlyle would have his head if he abandoned her.
…
George sat on the opposite side of Lucy’s bed from Lockwood, watching him. Ever since they were allowed in and Dr. Bowman explained Lucy’s condition, Lockwood took to sitting with his head in his hands again. It was the same posture he had assumed while they waited for news.
To his relative surprise, Lockwood had not touched Lucy once – not even to feel her pulse for himself. He worried that Lockwood was afraid Lucy would have another vision if he touched her. He worried Lockwood had reached all the wrong conclusions from today.
Magic released Lucy in the nick of time. Spending over 45 minutes locked in a vision had taken its toll though. If she spent any longer under, it could have caused permanent harm. Forget everything else – that alone was enough to justify Bowman putting Lucy in an induced coma while they monitored her brain activity to make sure nothing had been damaged. None of that would matter though; Lockwood was still blaming himself.
“It’s not your fault, you know,” he called over when he got tired of splitting his focus between the unconscious Lucy and Lockwood’s dejected form.
“I never should have let her get so close to me,” he heard Lockwood whisper. “I knew it wouldn’t end well…”
He scowled over at his friend. “So, this is the part where you convince yourself that she’d be better off without you and run away then, is it?” he demanded.
Lockwood had the gall to pull his head out of his hands and throw him a shattered look.
“Just look at what’s happened, George,” pleaded Lockwood, “You know I have to leave.”
He crossed his arms and harrumphed, giving Lockwood a sceptical expression. “No, actually, I don’t know,” he snapped. “She might not have woken up when you touched her, but she stopped thrashing around so much.”
“She needs her soulmate,” insisted Lockwood, “Forming the bond is the only way she’s going to be able to cope with visions like this in the future. She’s only using me because I happened to be nearby. But I can’t give her what she needs.”
His glasses flashed as he stared beadily at Lockwood. “Just how strong of a visual leaning does your magic have?” he challenged after a moment.
“It’s an exclusive leaning,” came Lockwood’s tired sounding answer.
He scowled harder. “Exclusive leanings aren’t common!” he growled, “I don’t know anyone else who has an exclusive visual leaning to their magic! Much less anyone who Lucy would have met –”
“ – I am not Lucy’s soulmate, George!” howled Lockwood with a vehemence that actually startled him a little.
“How do you know?” he shot back.
Lockwood’s gaze was hard as flint as he glared. “I am a vampire,” he rumbled. “I can’t be her soulmate – the bond would never take. I. Am. Dead. It is not me.”
This conversation was not going to get him anywhere. “So where does that leave us?” he asked rather than returning to the attack. “Magic is going to continue to send Lucy visions she can’t handle on her own, with or without you there.”
Lockwood folded in on himself. “…If I’m no longer around…magic might not force her to have such intense visions.”
“…Or, she’ll continue to have visions of exactly the same intensity, only without any access to the visuals magic thinks she needs to understand them. Then magic will try forcing visuals on her by plying her with higher levels of magic to compensate, and she’ll end up having the seizures she miraculously did not have today because you were there and could give her access to visually leaning magic,” he snarked back.
“George,” pleaded Lockwood.
“You know what? I don’t want to hear it,” he snapped before Lockwood could say any more. “There isn’t anyone who can actually stop you from leaving if you really want to.”
He fingered Lucy’s charm necklace in his pocket. Lucy kept wearing it, even when the charm stopped working to block visions. She never took it off. And yet, he found it cast away at the foot of her wardrobe in the shuffle of the medics taking her to the clinic.
He pulled it out now, and held it up for Lockwood to see. When he noticed it, his face went blank. It only angered him more. “I found this on her floor just before we left. Today was probably so hard on her because she wasn’t wearing it. Without the charm, there was nothing left to gatekeep her visions, so she had them all at once. This, is the only reason she hasn’t ended up in this situation before. You gave her this, Lockwood; you still think she’s better off if you leave?”
Lockwood looked utterly shattered. He was glassy-eyed and vibrating with contained emotion. He looked close to tears – but vampires did not have enough fluids in their body to do releasing things like cry. “I hurt her today,” he whispered, “She tried using my magic for something I couldn’t give her, and I hurt her.”
“Maybe it didn’t work right because you were resisting,” he snarked back.
Lockwood did not say anything.
“If you want to leave so bad, then go,” he snapped. Since no one else was going to do it, he took hold of Lucy’s hand and gave it a soft squeeze – just enough to let her know that someone was still there with her. He hoped her magic did not start freaking out again. They would not be able to calm her down if it did. Not without Lockwood.
For a long time, nobody moved. He refused to so much as glance over – preferring to let Lockwood stew in his thoughts. The tension in the room did not abate with time. It only grew cloying and thicker the longer it lasted. He studiously kept his focus on Lucy, not that anything much changed.
…
Lockwood stumbled vaguely down the hall. Every instinct was screaming at him to head back, to take hold of Lucy’s wrist and wrap his fingers over her throbbing pulse – to reassure himself she was still alive. It was not enough to hear her heartbeat, or listen to her breathing. The desire to touch her was almost overwhelming.
But he could not risk touching her. It had been his touch – his magic – that resulted in her lying in a hospital bed in the DSRAC clinic in an induced coma. Couldn’t George see that? If he was no longer around, maybe it would be easier for Lucy to identify her real soulmate, and then actually get a handle on her visions. His magic’s strong visual leaning was only serving to muddy the water, and distract from what she really needed.
For once, George did not understand. Lucy had become too reliant upon him. That was dangerous. He could not give her what she needed – he could not be her soulmate. He had to leave.
“Locky?” called someone’s surprised voice, startling him from his thoughts. “What you doin here instead of settin up shop by your girls’ side?”
He turned back to find Flo walking up, a concerned frown marring her face. “Flo,” he greeted softly. “I just needed to clear my head, is all. And Lucy’s…not ‘my’ girl…” The words tasted like ash on his tongue, even when he knew they were true. At least…he hoped they were true. They had to be true.
Flo only gave him a deep frown. “Isn’t she?” she asked.
“She’s not,” he sighed. “She needs her soulmate to cope with her visions. My magic just happens to have a strong leaning in a direction she needs.”
Flo did not respond – he felt her gaze pierce right through his meters thick façade to pick at the raw, bleeding skin beneath.
“Locky, you can’t keep treatin that girl like she’s just another magical you’ve helped,” she said after a long moment of silence.
He felt the need to insist that that was exactly what Lucy was, but found he could not force himself to say the words.
Flo seemed to know anyway. “I know you try helpin every magical you can to make up for the things you did you can’t remember,” she said. “Doesn’t it mean something that magic suddenly gave you a magical who immediately trusted you?”
He ran a hand tiredly through his hair. “I don’t pretend to understand what it means Flo. I let Lucy get too close to me, and now I’ve hurt her –”
“S’not the way it sounded to me,” interrupted Flo. Her eyes were still evaluating and sharp. “She needed you, and you were there for her.”
“I could have hurt her…I did hurt her…”
Flo’s hand landed on his shoulder. It had taken so long for him to earn her trust enough that she would approach him at all. It had not been like that with Lucy. She had not even realized what he was until after she saw it with her own eyes.
“You didn’t though,” insisted Flo firmly, eyes flashing. “Magic forced Lucy to have all those visons, not you. Yeah, it used you to let her see images, which she can’t do herself. Think about how much harder it would be for her if there was nobody around who could fill that hole for her, Locky. She needs you.”
“What she needs is her soulmate. I’m only getting in the way.”
“If you’re not?” prodded Flo.
He blinked tired eyes at her. “What?”
“What if you’re not getting in the way?” she elaborated. “What if magic is using you to make Lucy see because your part of the answer?”
“Flo,”
“Locky,” interrupted Flo, eyes sharp once again. “You’re always so worried about staying too long, or hurtin somebody. And you never do either of those things. It took me months before I could even think about getting out on my own. Even when I didn’t trust you at all, you still made sure I had everything I needed to be alright. You knew exactly when I needed help, and you knew exactly when I didn’t need it anymore at all. Why is it so much harder for you to see those same things with Lucy?”
“She’s too reliant on me…I can’t –”
“I was reliant on you, in the beginning,” she insisted.
“It’s just…different…with Lucy…” he mumbled.
“You like her,” stated Flo. His eyes snapped up to meet hers, wide and startled.
“I don’t –” Don’t what? He did not know.
“And you’re afraid she might like you back.”
If he still needed to breathe, he would be hyperventilating right now. “I don’t…I’m not…She isn’t…”
Flo gazed at him sadly. “Lockwood, it’s not a crime if you like her.”
“…I’m a vampire…” he breathed, like an admittance of sin.
“So what? You’ve got your soul – you’ve even got magic. And Lucy always trusted you. That came from magic too, you know. Magic always knows. It’s decided Lucy needs you to be safe – needs you to fill the gaps in her visions. For all we know, Lucy’s soulmate was someone from her hometown, who’s gone now. Maybe magic allowed her to trust you because you’re the only one who can help her now.”
He did not respond.
“She needs you Lockwood,” insisted Flo, “And I think you might need her just as much. Maybe that’s what magic is trying to say here. You can’t leave her – you know you can’t. Just stop fighting it, and I think it’ll get better.”
He realized that George had said basically the same thing. It scared him how much Lucy seemed to need him for her magic. No other magical he’d ever helped had been like that – and he’d helped a lot of magicals over the years. He was terrified of letting Lucy in too close, terrified of coming face-to-face with the ugly reality that Lucy would age and grow in a way he never could.
But both Flo and George were right about one thing – Lucy still needed him. She was not ready to go out on her own. He’d known exactly when to pull back from Flo, from all the others. Lucy was not there yet. Maybe once the message in these visions was dealt with, she could be…but in the meantime, he could not push her away as he kept trying. That was what was hurting her.
He needed to stop resisting, to let her take what she needed, and trust that magic knew what it was doing. If magic did not turn out to know, there was little chance he would know better.