Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

beg for forgiveness

Warnings: swearing, Lockwood typical self hatred

For lockwood and co, things go wrong all the time. It’s practically their mmo, fuck up wildly and yet still come out having defeated a ghost that nobody else could have. It’s how they can be both the best agency in London and the one with the worst reputation.

That didn’t stop Lockwood from making it all his fault though. 

This was frankly rude, in Lucy’s opinion. Her fuck ups were all her own, thank you very much and Lockwood taking credit for them was some blanet plagiarism. 

So when after a particularly disastrous job gone wrong (everyone almost died, property was destroyed, the skull was unhelpful, you know, the usual), Lockwood sat them all down at the kitchen table and opened his mouth with a look in his eyes that told Lucy everything she needed to know, she cut him off before he could even get a noise out. 

“Shut it” she says. “I know you’re going to start begging for forgiveness for whatever thing you think you’ve done to put us all in danger and I am frankly sick of it”. 

Lockwood’s face twisted into a look of both surprise and panic. It was only after the words left her mouth that Lucy realised that they kinda implied she was leaving again. That was very much not what she was trying to say. Lockwood opens his mouth to start his desperate apologies again.

“What I mean is“, she tries again, “is that I’m sick of you taking all the credit when things go wrong”. 

That seemed to genuinely confuse Lockwood, more so than her originally cutting him off. 

She slams her hand on the table, causing the teacups to rattle. “ I am perfectly capable of messing things up all by myself”. 

George nods in agreement, clearly having caught on to what she was on about. “We deserve credit for everything we do, even the wild fuck ups”. 

It’s Holly who ends up making their point clear, putting down her tea cup far more carefully than Lucy had. “just as everything Lockwood and co achieves is a group effort, so is everytime we fuck up”.

Lucy nods her agreement. “Exactly, so quit apologising, we get things done as a group, we fuck up as a group”. 

“You don't have to carry the weight of everything alone,” George adds. “That’s why there’s four of us, you idiot”.

Lockwood smiled, genuinely but softer than his usual Lockwood Smile (™). “Thanks guys”.

George gets up (leaving his empty cup on the table for someone else to deal with, rude) and gives Lockwood a friendly punch in the arm. “It’s what we’re here for”.

He keeps going, walking out of the kitchen with a “I’m going to bed. Night”. 

That effectively ended the conversation and reminded Lucy that, hey it’s 1:30 in the morning and you have spent most of the night running around an abandoned building causing property damage and almost dying. She dropped her tea cup in the sink (unlike George) with a yawn. 

“I’m gonna follow him” she mutters, making her way towards her bedroom.

Chapter Text

prophecy/ sewer/ taking accountability

Warning, crushed under rubble, implied character death, coming to terms with dying 

Why do ghosts insist on hanging out in the worst places possible? Sure most of the time these places suck because they were haunted but a sewer system was a new low.

The fact that it had collapsed in on them was only making things worse. Lucy was trying her best to focus on anything but the rock pressing down around her and she’s mainly doing that by complaining. 

At least she isn’t trapped anywhere with actual sewage. That would make this already bad situation worse. 

She’s already going to die with the smell of sewage attacking her nose. 

Oh. She’s going to die.

Death was such a constant in her life that Lucy had forgotten that it was something that could actually happen to her.

Guess almost dying so often made it seem unremarkable. But now there was no fight, no adrenaline to distract her, nothing she could do at all except wait underneath collapsed rock and hope somebody finds her. 

She hopes Lockwood, Holly and George are okay. She wasn’t anywhere near them when the tunnel had been brought down on top of her by the ghost they had been hunting for. The four of them had split up, to try and find the source, and clearly Lucy was the one who succeeded.

Lockwood and co has a reputation for property damage but this is a new high ( or maybe a new low). 

She hopes the others weren’t also caught up the collapse. If she is going to die down here in the pitch black and among the rumble pressing down and making it ever harder to breath as the oxygen ran out, she’d rather most of Lockwood and co doesn’t go with her. 

Every breath she takes is harder than the last. Time has become completely meaningless, she has no idea how long she has been trapped in the dark. The silence that surrounds her isn’t helping, crushingly quite compared to the constant noise and life of Portland row. 

She tries to focus her mind on anything but her impending doom. 

She thinks about Lockwood, and his stupid suits and hair that she wants to run her fingers through and his pile of problems that she knows that this will be added to. 

She thinks about George, and all the experiments on the Skull that he had planned that was never going to get to help him with. How she’s not going to get to see him solve the Problem, like they all know he’s going to.

She thinks about Holly and how they had only just started to get along. How much she had grown to appreciate everything Holly brought to the team once she had gotten over her jealousy.

She thinks about Portland row and the family she’d found there and everything they‘d survived together. Lucy wonders what Lockwood will do with her room in the attic if she isn’t found in time.

The darkness gets darker and the quiet gets heavier and it only gets harder and harder to breathe.

 Lucy hopes they find her soon.

Chapter Text

Caught in a net/ medical restraints/ pinned to the wall

Warnings- none

Lockwood regrets the decision to split up. At the time it had seemed like a good idea. All of the members of his team are extremely capable of looking after themselves and the property they had been hired to clear was massive. 

That was before he had heard the sound of smashing wood from a few corridors over. Muffled of course, but still loud enough that Lockwood could hear it. 

The sound had sent his heart racing in his chest. One of his team had found the ghost and from the sound of it, it wasn’t going well.

He had taken off running as soon as the sound had reached his ears, one hand on the handle of his rapier and coat billowing behind him. 

Skidding around the corner, he reached the source of the noise and it seems like he got there just in the nick of time. 

The room was a complete mess, furniture tossed in all directions, floor covered in splinters of wood and books scattered everywhere from where a bookshelf had been torn from the wall.

The most concerning sight, and the thing that had immediately grabbed his attention was George, pinned against the far wall by the ghost like a bug in the insect section of the museum and seemingly unconscious.

The floor around him was covered with a scattering of iron filament, a clear sign of an attempt to build a protective barrier. 

”Oi!” Lockwood yelled, drawing his sword, “ can I politely request you let my friend here go?”

The ghost snarled and threw a chair leg at his head. Lockwood ducked out of the way and it smashed into the door frame. “That wasn’t very nice” Lockwood remarks.

The ghost’s attention now torn away from George, the physic hold it had on him breaks, leave George crumpled on the ground like a rag doll.

Lockwood was far from calm but he did his best to push down his panic and maintain his cool guy farsad. Ghosts are only made worse by negative emotion after all. 

As the ghost continues its rampage of thrown objects that splatter into pieces as he does his best to avoid them, Lockwood scans the room desperately, looking for any tell-tale glow that might give him a clue to the location of this ghost’s source.

He doesn’t have any proof that the source is in this room but with a ghost this present and strong, it had to be at least close by. 

Finally his eyes landed on what had to be the source he was looking for. A book, sitting crumbled in a corner and glowing faintly, the tell tale pale green light catching his eye. 

Lockwood dives forward, ducking and waving his way across the room, avoiding the debris being thrown at his head and picking his way through the chaos that covers the floor. He makes it to the book, pulling a silver net from his belt with one hand while grabbing the book with the other.

The moment he wraps the book in the net, the swirling debris that had filled the room collapse to the floor, narrowly missing both him and George. 

Chapter Text

Trapped with the enemy/ elevator/ pushed beyond breaking point

warning- stuck in an in closed space, falling elevator, broken bones 

Where a source could be hidden in an elevator, Lucy has no idea. They need to figure that out quickly or this job is going to end very very badly. The elevator they ( and by they she means her and Lockwood, George being stationed right outside the elevator entrance that they had come in from) were stuck in had been the site of a deadly  accident decades ago and some part of the hotel's recent renovation had awakened the ghost of the person killed.

Which is how Lucy had ended up in this situation, trying her best to ward off a ghost in an incredibly cramped space, while Lockwood dug around in upended paneling, trying to figure out what the source is.

And then it seemed like the floor drops out from under them suddenly, Lucy’s stomach plummeting as the sound of the cables snapping one by one echoes through the metal box they were trapped it.

The only upside is that the ghost she’d been fighting seems to have disappeared, probably content with the fact that this fall is probably going to take them out. It may only be a couple of floors but Lucy remembers seeing statistics about elevator falls in a book one of her sisters was reading and she does not like their odds. 

The lack of ghost did mean that when Lockwood grabbed the edge of her sleeve and pulled her down next to him on the floor, they weren’t about to get ghost touch on top of everything else that was happening.

Thanks to Lockwood, both of them are lying flat on the floor as the elevator falls,even if Lucy had no idea why. She does feel safer lying on the floor then she did standing up, even if she has no idea why that is. It’s kinda hard to think about it through the fear that’s racing through her. the floor of the elevator feels like it’s falling faster than she is but she doesn’t reach out to brace herself, instead wrapping one arm around her head.  

Lucy reaches out and grabs Lockwood’s hand. He turns his head to the side and smiles at her. She smiles back.

The elevator keeps falling. It feels like it’s been falling forever. 

Then it isn’t falling anymore. 

The impact radiates through her bones, an incredibly painful shattering feeling that she hopes isn’t what it feels like. It’s accompanied by the sound of crunching metal, that grates against her ears and only jars her more. The mirrored wall shatters, raining broken glass down on them. 

The fall has turned the elevator into a half crushed metal can and Lucy tightens her grip on Lockwood’s hand. She gets a squeeze back in return. 

She wonders what George is doing (think about anything but the pain). She wonders if he knows anything’s wrong ( the elevator falling must have made an awful sound) and if he’s gone to get help. 

If he has, Lucy hopes he hurries up.

Chapter Text

touch/ flashbacks/ scalding

Warnings- discussions of death 

Lucy is a Listener. Lockwood’s main Talent is Sight.

George’s is Touch.

It’s not as impressive or flashy as Lockwood and Lucy’s and it’s way less useful in battle but it’s perfect for what George is interested in. 

Researching sources. Trying to find the origin of the Problem so that he can finally put an end to it. 

But every Talent has its dangers. Listeners lured away by the whispers of ghosts, those with Sight faced with far more detailed and horrific visages of death that others with Talent face.

Those with Touch have a weakness to being overwhelmed by the visions and feelings of a source. It’s a strange feeling, living memories that did not happen to you but that feel like they did. 

It can be painful too, depending on how the Visitor died. Someone who died a relatively peaceful death, lived a happy life or died without regrets may have a weak presence or a more peaceful one, reliving their life rather than their death.

But for ghosts who died painful deaths and met violent ends, the rage they feel lingers and festers and can be intense and overwhelming for someone who isn’t prepared for it. Sometimes as well, this overwhelm of the Visitor’s presence can include feeling the pain they felt as they died. 

In other words, while his particular strongest Talent makes him particularly sensitive to sources, it also makes him particularly weak to them. 

If George had any more common sense, he probably wouldn’t spend quite so much time poking around various sources he knows very little about but he is a member of Lockwood and co and the only one of them with a healthy amount of fear around ghosts is Holly. 

Besides, what's science without a little bit of random experimenting on yourself?

Chapter Text

Hidden injury/ laceration/ forced reveal

Warning- minor injuries, emotional hurt/comfort

It was only once they got home that George noticed that Lockwood was limping. He elbows Lucy in the side to grab her attention.

“Oi, what the hell was that for?” She mutters. 

George rolls his eyes. Why is everyone so unobservant.

“Lockwood’s injured” he hisses.

Lucy knows what he means immediately. It’s not just that Lockwood is injured, stuff happens, it’s that he neglected to tell them. Lockwood has a tendency to keep all his problems locked up inside him and then do absolutely anything other than deal with those problems, no matter how much 

And him and Lucy had made an agreement to call him out on it, to offer the help the idiot refused to ask for.

“Lockwood” Lucy yells, cupping her hands around her mouth, “you good?”

Lockwood stops in front of the stairway and straightens out his posture before responding. “Why’d you ask?”.

“Because you are limping?” George chimes in. “Thought we agreed to tell people we we get hurt”. 

They’d had that chat a while ago. Each of them individually upset about the other's shitty coping mechanisms and pointedly ignoring how they did the exact same thing.

“It’s not a big deal” Lockwood shrugs. “Just a graze, didn’t want to bother anyone about it”.

George rolls his eyes. “Did we or did we not agree that any kind of injury counted? I swear I am the only competent one here”. 

( this is a lie. George is just as bad at self care as the rest of Lockwood and co. Prone to forgetting to eat and loosing himself completely in research, willing to do anything to get just a hint more information). 

“Fine”. Lockwood says, pulling up one of his pant legs. “It is literally just a graze, see?”

The wound on Lockwood’s leg is the most primary school looking injury George has ever seen. It truly looks like he fell over on the asphalt basketball court while trying to avoid getting hit by a ball.

“I’m going to go get a band aid” Lucy declares, heading for the bathroom and the first aid kit that is kept there.

“I know it’s not that serious” George says while they wait for Lucy to get back. Lockwood moves to sit in a bench that lives in the hallway (mainly acting as a dumping ground for anything that nobody wants to put away) “but we did say any injury”. 

He sits down next to Lockwood.

“I didn’t want to bother anyone” Lockwood mumbles.

George rolls his eyes. “Lucy said the same thing when she fell down the stairs and cut her leg on that one case. And I claimed that when I burnt my hand”.

Lockwood frowns. “That’s different”.

“How?” George scoffs. Lockwood doesn’t have a response.

He leans over and rests his head on Lockwood’s shoulder. “We’re Lockwood and co right? No problem too small”

“No haunting too big” Lockwood finishes.

“Exactly”.