[This is an interesting message. Lucy seems to prefer face-to-face contact when it comes to messages. She's also an intensely private person; this is the first time she's openly reached out to him.]
Hello, Lucy. If there's something you'd like to talk about, I'd be happy to listen. As your friend (I hope it's not presuming too much to call myself that), I promise that I won't speak to anyone about it.
Yes. You are my friend. I think you know that if I didn't consider you my friend, I wouldn't have said anything at all. I still sort of think I shouldn't have. But Polnareff would want me to, so I will.
My concern is that if I tell Polnareff about this, he might do something that I would rather he not do. He's a very impulsive and protective person. Which is fine. But not in this case.
I need help figuring out what to do about someone who's just arrived here, if anything. His name is Gyro Zeppeli.
This is another conversation for another time, I think, but the reason I asked is because I don't like to make assumptions about relationships in that way. That's all.
Polnareff is an unusually good person. He is unfortunately, like you said, also a very impulsive person, which can sometimes be a dangerous combination when he feels like someone he cares about has been wrong.
Gyro Zeppeli. Yes, I spoke with him. And I saw that you spoke with him too.
Yes, I was. I don't think much of adults who make stupid decisions and then expect the world to fall in line to suit them. Especially when they double down on their bad decisions instead of correcting them.
As for why you got angry: well, it's an awful thing to deal with. Because it's like the things you remember-- everything that happened between Point Gyro and Point Lucy-- don't matter. It's like they didn't happen at all.
I don't think I know any other kind of adults. My mother wasn't like that, and my friend wasn't, but they died.
I don't mind if you swear during this conversation. But I still don't understand. Usually when something bad happens I don't get angry. I get sad or tired.
I only know a few who aren't like that. If I wanted to count them, I wouldn't even need to use all the fingers on one hand.
Ok. I'll keep that in mind. But I'll also try not to swear too much, because I know you don't like it.
To be honest, getting angry is a bad habit of mine. One that started because I was very tired and very sad. And then it turned out, underneath those feelings, I was also very angry. It was just that being sad and tired had smothered it until then.
I don't think I've ever had a friend. So it might take me some time to adjust to things like that.
I thought people just had one emotion at a time. But maybe it makes sense. I was guilty and sad and angry and tired all at once. It's very inefficient and confusing.
That's ok. Someone being your friend is very strange when you're used to not having any. You have to change the way you think about them.
Feelings are honestly needlessly complicated sometimes. It would be a lot simpler if they came in an orderly fashion, one at a time. Instead of several being noisy at the same time.
Most of the time I tell myself facts. Things that I've observed that run contrary to what I feel or believe. And then I just repeat them, over and over, until they start to stick a little better.
Do you mean like having an emotion without really feeling it? That happens to me sometimes. I'll get angry or sad, but it doesn't register properly. Pain too, but that's not quite what we're talking about.
That sounds hard. I don't know if I can do it. And I think a lot of the bad things I think I don't have evidence against the truth of them.
Maybe? I'm not sure. Sometimes when I know I should be scared I'm not really sure if I am or not, I can't tell if I feel it or if I feel something else. The pain thing has happened, though. Just not feeling it until a long time later.
It is hard. And frustrating, too, because a lot of the time it feels like I'm just lying to myself.
We're probably just using different words for the same phenomena. You put them somewhere else; they don't connect for me. I've thought about this a lot, actually. If that response to strong (but inconvenient) feelings is similar to the way bodies, when they're producing adrenaline, can numb pain when it's necessary to keep moving in order to survive.
The facts that make me feel better are mostly facts that I think other people hate about me. Or think I shouldn't be happy about. Like my life back home. It makes me feel like I have somewhere to go back to that I can succeed at. But every time I mention it Togami makes a face and Polnareff changes the subject.
Once when I almost died I got cold all over. I think I get cold when the feelings thing happens to. Has that ever happened to you?
[Lucy has closed herself up in a box called Mrs. Stephen Steel. Fugo doesn't know why the hell someone as young as Lucy is married. Or what circumstances have lead to her adamant desire to protect a man who made a child his wife. She shouldn't have to. It should not be Lucy's responsibility to protect the feelings and the reputation of a grown man. But here she is, standing in front of him like a shield when her first thought should be--
Ah, he thinks, as it comes upon him: Lucy is protecting herself.
Lucy, the child, is powerless. Mrs. Stephen Steel, though-- Mrs. Stephen Steel can lean in and whisper in her husband's ear. Mrs. Stephen Steel can write letters in her husband's name. Standing behind a man too weak to stand on his own, Mrs. Stephen Steel can organize a cross-country horse race. No wonder Lucy, a survivor, doesn't want to let go of that cowardly man's name, even in a place where it has no power at all.]
Think of your home like a snow globe. You're on the inside looking out, while JP and Togami are from the outside looking in. All three of you are looking at the same scenery, but from such different angles it's like you're looking at different places. Does that make sense?
Yes. Sometimes when I get upset but can't feel it, I get cold all over. But especially in my fingers. I touch something warm and I can't feel it at all.
[Once when I almost died. Fugo feels a dull throb of directionless, painful hate. He doesn't have names or faces. He doesn't even know what the circumstances were. All he can hate is that near-death experiences are something that he shares with Lucy. He hates that she had to live through that.]
[It's a very simple statement. But then, on the other hand, from someone who's so recently said she doesn't want to ever be angry . . . maybe it means a lot.]
[She glances down at her hands. They're very small and weak. But they can hold a grown man up. They can carry a severed head in a sack and save the world. They can do a lot of things except stop working.]
Do you know what the connection is? Between the danger and the feeling. Why it ends up in the same place on your body.
When I was seven years old, I gave a concert. It was for charity. My grandfather spent a month organizing it, making sure everything was perfect for the concert and the dinner. That's what the tickets bought: a seat in the concert hall to listen to me play, then everyone went downstairs for the dinner.
It was hard to practice. My parents didn't have a piano in the house, so I had to get special permission from my school so I could stay late practicing. I got in trouble for losing the key, because my brothers would take it from me and hide it or throw it away. I had to carry my music with me everywhere, because if I didn't they would find a way to take it and mix the pages up. I barely had enough time to memorize and perfect the piece so I just
I didn't have time. For all of that. Especially when I still had work for school that had to be done on top of everything else.
When the evening came, I couldn't eat. I hadn't slept very well either. I couldn't stop thinking about how my grandfather had told me that he'd sold every ticket; about how much money he had spent and how much people had spent, all because they wanted to come listen to me play. I was so afraid of making a mistake. Or playing the wrong song. Or tripping and falling when I walked out on stage. And when we got there ... it was cold. It was barely spring, but the whole building was so cold. There were bright lights on the stage but the rest of the hall was dark. I couldn't see anyone, but I knew there was a crowd of people looking at me. Watching. Listening. I sat down on the bench and when I touched the keys they were like ice. My hands were shaking, but I made them stop. I pushed all of it away because if I didn't I wouldn't have been able to play and then all those people would have paid all that money for nothing.
After it was all over, my grandfather said he was very proud of me. And that he thought we should do it again. He asked me if I wanted to come live with him and Nana, because there was plenty of room in his house for a piano.
[There's a long, long pause.]
Sorry. I've Never told anyone that story before. I didn't realize it would be so long. But that's why my hands get cold. I think. Because that's the first time I can remember it happening.
[She doesn't respond right away. Not for a long time, actually. Because she spends so much time watching and listening and paying attention to why people do what they do, she realizes that this is an unusual thing for Fugo to say, to her or to anyone. Because she spends so much time watching and listening and paying attention, she recognizes as well that there are many differences between what she's thinking of and what Fugo is describing, but at the same time there are an unsettling number of similarities.]
[It's easier to analyze something bad happening to someone else. More to the point, it's easier for her to understand something bad happening to a boy, because it's less par for the course, more unusual, out of the norm. She considers the thought of it, Fugo as a little child too brilliant to know what to do with himself, and his grandfather speaking to him like that.]
[It occurs to her slowly that there was a method to those words. How he had sold every ticket; how he had spent so much money; how other people had spent so much money; how everyone's hopes were so high. The way the pride and safety only came after the results.]
[She isn't sure that she hates Fugo's grandfather. She isn't sure she hates anyone except Valentine, really. And she isn't sure that she would hurt him if she saw him. What she does recognize is the acidic stirring of violence in her chest. If she saw a man like that, maybe she wouldn't think him the devil. But evil? Yes, she thinks so. She thinks he might be.]
I don't remember the first time it happened to me. Maybe one night when I saw the men who came to visit my father. A cluster of men came to see him and speak very close to his face until he gave them money, and then they went away. But my mother told me not to be afraid, so I was good and didn't. But my hands were cold. And got cold again when they came back and back and back again.
It's like a diamond. Isn't it? What fear becomes when it's pressed in on itself and doesn't have anywhere else to go. It becomes cold. But sharp. Blades made of tears.
It isn't stupid, Lucy. Please don't say that about yourself.
[In his bedroom, Fugo rubs the knuckles of his chilly fingers together. There's a hollow and aching spot in his chest when he thinks of Lucy and her blades of tears and Haruno struggling to learn Italian on his own. Is it sadness he feels for them, or anger? Right now it's difficult for him to tell. Perhaps it's both.]
Fear freezes. It weighs you down. Holds you fast so you can't move. But there are times in life, aren't there Lucy, where freezing will kill you. So you have to hold fear down. You have to smother it, or you will die. It's hard the first time but it gets easier and easier every time you do it. Until you don't feel fear at all. Just cold.
Have you ever heard the riddle: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
I've always thought it was stupid. Even if no one heard it, even if no one realized what happened, the tree still made a sound when it fell. I think fear is like that. When you smother something it should die, right? It should go away. But when you smother fear you aren't really killing it. You're just pulling it in to a tiny spot in your chest and making it a part of yourself. And now that you have it, you can't let go.
You hold on tight and it turns into diamonds. Into poison.
[Please don't say that about yourself. It's a curious statement. It gives Lucy pause. Please don't say that about yourself; she doesn't understand why not. It seems true, to her. But Stephen would get upset when she said things like that, too. You're not stupid, Lucy, you're the smartest girl I know! he'd say, and smile, and try so hard to cheer her up . . . so she smiled for him, like she knew he wanted.]
[She doesn't try to cheer up for Fugo. She's pretty sure he doesn't want that. She's pretty sure it'd upset him. She doesn't want to upset Fugo--is fairly sure she can't fix what's hurting him, but she doesn't want to make it worse, either.]
[It turns into diamonds. Into poison. Is that . . .]
I'm sorry. I won't say it again. But that doesn't mean I'll stop thinking it.
I was supposed to freeze. That's what I was supposed to do. I don't know if that makes any sense. Maybe it does . . . but a lot of people around here say things I don't understand like they're so easy, like fighting was meant to be natural to me, and it never was. I only ever was supposed to be good and polite and helpful and obedient.
I think doing that I stored up too much poison. Sometimes I can't feel my fingers from it. Sometimes I don't know who I am anymore. It was easier at home; I had a place at home. I didn't have people telling me how wrong I was all the time. How I should be such and such a way. Nobody told me anything anymore but Stephen.
[Standing behind a man too weak to stand on his own, Mrs. Stephen Steel can . . . do anything.]
[It's hard. To care about yourself even a little bit as much as other people love you.
He can't change the way Lucy thinks about herself. But he can care about her. He can wholeheartedly believe in her cleverness. Trust that if he gives her the right pieces and tools, she'll fit them together and see the whole of his secret. It's frightening, thinking about what Lucy might do once she knows what he's really like. Still. He wants to give it to her. To do with what she will.]
When my grandfather asked me if I wanted to come live with him I said, "Please let me stay with you."
People who have never been powerless don't understand. What it's like to make a choice where you have to decide how you're going to be hurt. How the best possible decision you could make is the one where you will hurt the least.
I don't want to tell you what to think or how to feel or how you should be. I think ... you must be sick to death of that.
It isn't wrong to want to have the power to protect yourself.
[The thing about text is: she could keep herself from saying that. She could type it and then delete it instead of sending it. She makes the choice not to. Not to tell Fugo that what he did was wrong, just this very personal statement of fact: Lucy Steel, who hates very few people, not even many she should hate, hates Fugo's grandfather.]
[It's a remarkable admission of emotion, from her. She drops it into the conversation and then moves smoothly along.]
I am sick of it. My life is worth something, what I've made of it. Just because it isn't the best it could be doesn't mean it isn't the best I could make it.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shortly after the gyrival
Regards,
Lucy Steel
no subject
Hello, Lucy. If there's something you'd like to talk about, I'd be happy to listen. As your friend (I hope it's not presuming too much to call myself that), I promise that I won't speak to anyone about it.
Fugo
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Yes. You are my friend. I think you know that if I didn't consider you my friend, I wouldn't have said anything at all. I still sort of think I shouldn't have. But Polnareff would want me to, so I will.
My concern is that if I tell Polnareff about this, he might do something that I would rather he not do. He's a very impulsive and protective person. Which is fine. But not in this case.
I need help figuring out what to do about someone who's just arrived here, if anything. His name is Gyro Zeppeli.
Lucy
no subject
This is another conversation for another time, I think, but the reason I asked is because I don't like to make assumptions about relationships in that way. That's all.
Polnareff is an unusually good person. He is unfortunately, like you said, also a very impulsive person, which can sometimes be a dangerous combination when he feels like someone he cares about has been wrong.
Gyro Zeppeli. Yes, I spoke with him. And I saw that you spoke with him too.
Fugo
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That's all right. I can ask some other time.
You were very rude to him. But I suppose I was too. I got angry with him. Because he didn't remember me.
Why did that make me angry?
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Yes, I was. I don't think much of adults who make stupid decisions and then expect the world to fall in line to suit them. Especially when they double down on their bad decisions instead of correcting them.
As for why you got angry: well, it's an awful thing to deal with. Because it's like the things you remember-- everything that happened between Point Gyro and Point Lucy-- don't matter. It's like they didn't happen at all.
Which is bullshit. (Pardon my language.)
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I don't mind if you swear during this conversation. But I still don't understand. Usually when something bad happens I don't get angry. I get sad or tired.
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Ok. I'll keep that in mind. But I'll also try not to swear too much, because I know you don't like it.
To be honest, getting angry is a bad habit of mine. One that started because I was very tired and very sad. And then it turned out, underneath those feelings, I was also very angry. It was just that being sad and tired had smothered it until then.
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I didn't know emotions worked that way. Is that really true?
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I don't know if it's like that for everyone. But for me, yes.
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I thought people just had one emotion at a time. But maybe it makes sense. I was guilty and sad and angry and tired all at once. It's very inefficient and confusing.
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Feelings are honestly needlessly complicated sometimes. It would be a lot simpler if they came in an orderly fashion, one at a time. Instead of several being noisy at the same time.
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Mine usually do, but maybe it's because I don't let other ones happen. I just put them somewhere else. I don't know, though.
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Do you mean like having an emotion without really feeling it? That happens to me sometimes. I'll get angry or sad, but it doesn't register properly. Pain too, but that's not quite what we're talking about.
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Maybe? I'm not sure. Sometimes when I know I should be scared I'm not really sure if I am or not, I can't tell if I feel it or if I feel something else. The pain thing has happened, though. Just not feeling it until a long time later.
no subject
We're probably just using different words for the same phenomena. You put them somewhere else; they don't connect for me. I've thought about this a lot, actually. If that response to strong (but inconvenient) feelings is similar to the way bodies, when they're producing adrenaline, can numb pain when it's necessary to keep moving in order to survive.
no subject
Once when I almost died I got cold all over. I think I get cold when the feelings thing happens to. Has that ever happened to you?
no subject
Ah, he thinks, as it comes upon him: Lucy is protecting herself.
Lucy, the child, is powerless. Mrs. Stephen Steel, though-- Mrs. Stephen Steel can lean in and whisper in her husband's ear. Mrs. Stephen Steel can write letters in her husband's name. Standing behind a man too weak to stand on his own, Mrs. Stephen Steel can organize a cross-country horse race. No wonder Lucy, a survivor, doesn't want to let go of that cowardly man's name, even in a place where it has no power at all.]
Think of your home like a snow globe. You're on the inside looking out, while JP and Togami are from the outside looking in. All three of you are looking at the same scenery, but from such different angles it's like you're looking at different places. Does that make sense?
Yes. Sometimes when I get upset but can't feel it, I get cold all over. But especially in my fingers. I touch something warm and I can't feel it at all.
[Once when I almost died. Fugo feels a dull throb of directionless, painful hate. He doesn't have names or faces. He doesn't even know what the circumstances were. All he can hate is that near-death experiences are something that he shares with Lucy. He hates that she had to live through that.]
no subject
[It's a very simple statement. But then, on the other hand, from someone who's so recently said she doesn't want to ever be angry . . . maybe it means a lot.]
[She glances down at her hands. They're very small and weak. But they can hold a grown man up. They can carry a severed head in a sack and save the world. They can do a lot of things except stop working.]
Do you know what the connection is? Between the danger and the feeling. Why it ends up in the same place on your body.
no subject
It was hard to practice. My parents didn't have a piano in the house, so I had to get special permission from my school so I could stay late practicing. I got in trouble for losing the key, because my brothers would take it from me and hide it or throw it away. I had to carry my music with me everywhere, because if I didn't they would find a way to take it and mix the pages up. I barely had enough time to memorize and perfect the piece so I just
I didn't have time. For all of that. Especially when I still had work for school that had to be done on top of everything else.
When the evening came, I couldn't eat. I hadn't slept very well either. I couldn't stop thinking about how my grandfather had told me that he'd sold every ticket; about how much money he had spent and how much people had spent, all because they wanted to come listen to me play. I was so afraid of making a mistake. Or playing the wrong song. Or tripping and falling when I walked out on stage. And when we got there ... it was cold. It was barely spring, but the whole building was so cold. There were bright lights on the stage but the rest of the hall was dark. I couldn't see anyone, but I knew there was a crowd of people looking at me. Watching. Listening. I sat down on the bench and when I touched the keys they were like ice. My hands were shaking, but I made them stop. I pushed all of it away because if I didn't I wouldn't have been able to play and then all those people would have paid all that money for nothing.
After it was all over, my grandfather said he was very proud of me. And that he thought we should do it again. He asked me if I wanted to come live with him and Nana, because there was plenty of room in his house for a piano.
[There's a long, long pause.]
Sorry. I've
Never told anyone that story before. I didn't realize it would be so long.
But that's why my hands get cold. I think. Because that's the first time I can remember it happening.
no subject
[It's easier to analyze something bad happening to someone else. More to the point, it's easier for her to understand something bad happening to a boy, because it's less par for the course, more unusual, out of the norm. She considers the thought of it, Fugo as a little child too brilliant to know what to do with himself, and his grandfather speaking to him like that.]
[It occurs to her slowly that there was a method to those words. How he had sold every ticket; how he had spent so much money; how other people had spent so much money; how everyone's hopes were so high. The way the pride and safety only came after the results.]
[She isn't sure that she hates Fugo's grandfather. She isn't sure she hates anyone except Valentine, really. And she isn't sure that she would hurt him if she saw him. What she does recognize is the acidic stirring of violence in her chest. If she saw a man like that, maybe she wouldn't think him the devil. But evil? Yes, she thinks so. She thinks he might be.]
I don't remember the first time it happened to me. Maybe one night when I saw the men who came to visit my father. A cluster of men came to see him and speak very close to his face until he gave them money, and then they went away. But my mother told me not to be afraid, so I was good and didn't. But my hands were cold. And got cold again when they came back and back and back again.
It's like a diamond. Isn't it? What fear becomes when it's pressed in on itself and doesn't have anywhere else to go. It becomes cold. But sharp. Blades made of tears.
No, that's stupid. Never mind.
no subject
[In his bedroom, Fugo rubs the knuckles of his chilly fingers together. There's a hollow and aching spot in his chest when he thinks of Lucy and her blades of tears and Haruno struggling to learn Italian on his own. Is it sadness he feels for them, or anger? Right now it's difficult for him to tell. Perhaps it's both.]
Fear freezes. It weighs you down. Holds you fast so you can't move. But there are times in life, aren't there Lucy, where freezing will kill you. So you have to hold fear down. You have to smother it, or you will die. It's hard the first time but it gets easier and easier every time you do it. Until you don't feel fear at all. Just cold.
Have you ever heard the riddle: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
I've always thought it was stupid. Even if no one heard it, even if no one realized what happened, the tree still made a sound when it fell. I think fear is like that. When you smother something it should die, right? It should go away. But when you smother fear you aren't really killing it. You're just pulling it in to a tiny spot in your chest and making it a part of yourself. And now that you have it, you can't let go.
You hold on tight and it turns into diamonds. Into poison.
no subject
[She doesn't try to cheer up for Fugo. She's pretty sure he doesn't want that. She's pretty sure it'd upset him. She doesn't want to upset Fugo--is fairly sure she can't fix what's hurting him, but she doesn't want to make it worse, either.]
[It turns into diamonds. Into poison. Is that . . .]
I'm sorry. I won't say it again. But that doesn't mean I'll stop thinking it.
I was supposed to freeze. That's what I was supposed to do. I don't know if that makes any sense. Maybe it does . . . but a lot of people around here say things I don't understand like they're so easy, like fighting was meant to be natural to me, and it never was. I only ever was supposed to be good and polite and helpful and obedient.
I think doing that I stored up too much poison. Sometimes I can't feel my fingers from it. Sometimes I don't know who I am anymore. It was easier at home; I had a place at home. I didn't have people telling me how wrong I was all the time. How I should be such and such a way. Nobody told me anything anymore but Stephen.
[Standing behind a man too weak to stand on his own, Mrs. Stephen Steel can . . . do anything.]
You don't. Is it because of the poison?
no subject
[It's hard. To care about yourself even a little bit as much as other people love you.
He can't change the way Lucy thinks about herself. But he can care about her. He can wholeheartedly believe in her cleverness. Trust that if he gives her the right pieces and tools, she'll fit them together and see the whole of his secret. It's frightening, thinking about what Lucy might do once she knows what he's really like. Still. He wants to give it to her. To do with what she will.]
When my grandfather asked me if I wanted to come live with him I said, "Please let me stay with you."
People who have never been powerless don't understand. What it's like to make a choice where you have to decide how you're going to be hurt. How the best possible decision you could make is the one where you will hurt the least.
I don't want to tell you what to think or how to feel or how you should be. I think ... you must be sick to death of that.
It isn't wrong to want to have the power to protect yourself.
no subject
[The thing about text is: she could keep herself from saying that. She could type it and then delete it instead of sending it. She makes the choice not to. Not to tell Fugo that what he did was wrong, just this very personal statement of fact: Lucy Steel, who hates very few people, not even many she should hate, hates Fugo's grandfather.]
[It's a remarkable admission of emotion, from her. She drops it into the conversation and then moves smoothly along.]
I am sick of it. My life is worth something, what I've made of it. Just because it isn't the best it could be doesn't mean it isn't the best I could make it.
Thank you for not taking that away from me.