章節 100: 100 Interlude: Lucy 'Carrot' Darwick
A/N: Whoop whoop, one hundo baby!! Gonna make it extra depressing in celebration (:
Also, trying something new with this chapter by doing an interlude in 3rd person, mostly cuz writing depression in first person is too hard cuz depressed people don't have a lot of thoughts.
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Blackness.
𝘋𝘳𝘪𝘱.
Nothing to be seen and nothing to be heard except for a single slow, rhythmic sound.
𝘋𝘳𝘪𝘱.
Inside of this pitch black room, there is a girl. A girl filled with emptiness and grief as she lies exposed in a bath filled with tainted water, her hair splayed out around her without a single care.
𝘋𝘳𝘪𝘱.
Silent and alone, the girl stares at nothing, unable to form even a single thought.
𝘋𝘳𝘪𝘱.
Unseen in the shadowed room, her skin is in stark contrast with the room itself, being a pale white as if she has never seen the sun.
𝘋𝘳𝘪𝘱.
The only exception being right below her eyes, where her pale, paper white skin changes to show a deep, black and purple bruise like colour.
𝘋𝘳𝘪𝘱.
The girl does not know how long she has been laying there, and she does not care.
𝘋𝘳𝘪𝘱.
However she is dragged from her state of melancholy by a soft, gentle sound that rings out in the silence of the room like a tolling bell.
𝘒𝘯𝘰𝘤𝘬, 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘤𝘬.
Slowly, the girl turns her head to face where she knows the double locked door is, even if she cannot see it.
"H-hey, uh. Lucy? It's uh, it's nearly dinner time." There is a pause as the uncertain sounding voice attempts to gather themselves, "you uh, I don't think you've eaten anything since, uh, since. Well, you know. Since.. I just... Please eat something? For me? Please."
Silence is his only answer and a sigh can barely be heard through the door as he realises that silence is the best he will get.
"Well, just... I'll be eating in a bit. I put some pizza in the oven. Y-you know where to find me I guess, so.. just. You don't have to, but if you want, I'm cooking enough for us both, so.. don't be a stranger?"
It's only a few minutes after the soft sound of footsteps have disappeared that Lucy finally moves, seemingly with great difficulty.
Tainted water trickles down her bare body as she rises out of the tub, stepping over it's wall and lethargically walking to a specific part of the room, uncaring of the trail of liquid following her wake.
She reaches a sink, stopping just before she would have bumped into it despite the dark, showing her familiarity with the room.
Reaching one hand forward while the other rests on the lip of the sink, she fumbles about for a moment before finding what she was looking for.
𝘊𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘬.
Following the soft noise, light suddenly shines withing the room from a ring of dim lights that surround a mirror on the wall the sink is connected to.
The change in lighting allows Lucy to properly see her reflection.
Her bare flesh, white as snow is blanketed with darkened water, stained red as it flows down her body.
The colour of the water brings Lucy's eyes down to her arms where she spends a minute simply staring and taking in the sight of all the jarring red gashes decorating her arms from wrist to elbow.
Looking back up at the mirror, Lucy looks herself in the eyes, not reacting even the slightest bit to the sight of eyes that lack even a hint of light to them, as if she is devoid of life but not yet quite dead.
A description that adequately explains how she feels.
Raising one of her arms, she holds her hand over the sink and watches as blood and water builds up on the tip of her index finger, forming a drop that grows until it is to heavy to stick to her skin.
Her lifeforce drops down to join the water in the sink with a familiar sound.
𝘋𝘳𝘪𝘱.
Forty minutes later and the boy known as Charlie is sitting alone in the Ward's common room, holding the mask of his Root persona in his hand and staring at it with an intensity rarely seen in one his age.
In front of him, on the table are two untouched pizzas that have both long gone cold.
Yet, he still shows no intention of taking a single bite, too lost in his own thoughts to care about hunger.
However the sound of a door quietly swinging open drags his attention away from his thoughts and towards the young girl approaching him.
Her brown hair is a mess of tangles and roots and she only has a long sleeved black hoodie and baggy pants to cover her unhealthily pale skin.
Though he does notice that she has bags under her eyes much like his own, made even more visible due to their contrast with her skin.
All without saying a single word, she stumbles her way up to the table and sits opposite him.
Both of them drag a plate of pizza in front of themselves and pick up a slice. Then they both mournfully throw the slice at each other's plates and proceed to take a bite out of the traded pieces at the same time, as if it is an action they have practiced a thousand times.
"Sharing is caring." Charlie whispers, his voice hoarse and barely loud enough to be heard even in the otherwise silent room.
Yet, despite the simplicity of the statement, the weight behind the words tells of deeper meaning, as if those three words are a memory crystalised.
A single tear trails down Lucy's face at the reminder of what they've lost even though her expression doesn't so much as twitch, and they both continue eating in complete silence.
Eventually the meal comes to an end, with Lucy only having eaten half of her pizza by the time Charlie had finished his. Almost mechanically, she rises to her feet, plate in hand, and makes to walk to the kitchen, only for her legs to give out, causing her to stumble and barely catch herself from falling by holding onto the counter.
"Are you ok!?" Charlie exclaims in panic as he rushes to his feet an moves to help her stand, but as his hand is reaching out to steady her shoulder, it is slapped away.
"I'm fine." Lucy grits out through clenched teeth and it is obvious that it is a lie, but Charlie isn't going to call her out on it. He just wants to help.
"Ok, ok. Just. If you need help, all you have to do is say, I mean, not that you 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 need help, but just if you need help moving with your leg-" He is cut off however, by Lucy's words that are just shy of shouting.
"I said. I'm. Fine."
She clearly is not, but Charlie doesn't know what the appropriate response is, so he just tries his best.
"Ok. Ok, I'm sorry, just. I can clean up by myself, so you can just. Leave your plate here. I'll deal with it." His voice is soft and caring as he does his best to avoid angering his dear friend any more.
She doesn't move immediately and for a moment he worries that he said something wrong.
That is, until she stumbles a single step forward and all but collapses into him, making him struggle to catch her as she leans on him.
For a moment he is confused on how to proceed, until he hears soft sniffles and realises that she is crying.
Without a word, he just wraps his arms around her and starts rubbing circles on her back.
Soon enough, his tears end up flowing just as surely as her own.
Unfortunately for the lonesome pair, their moment of grief is interrupted by a distant crashing sound, shortly followed by the entire building shaking around them.
Immediately, their training kicks in and they separate, Root quickly putting on his mask as the rooms intercom sounds out.
"Attention all persons. Crawler of the Slaughterhouse Nine is here. Unarmed personnel are to evacuate immediately. Everyone else, remember your briefings, all Protectorate members are on their way."
Another resounding crash follows the announcement and the two Wards struggle to keep their footing as the building shakes.
Without a word, Lucy rushes back to her room, uncaring of the pain lancing down her legs with every step.
By the time she makes is back to the room, Carrot looks almost as ready for a fight as Root does.
Still, neither of them speak.
There is no need to ask what their plan is, what they're going to do.
Both of them are too far gone with anger and grief to care about whether or not revenge is something possible.
But before they can even go about searching for their quarry, the wall in front of them explodes outward in their direction.
Root reacts without thinking, extending and expanding his arms into thick, wall-like roots that protect both of them from all the debris.
But as he retracts his roots and they are granted clear sight of what they are facing, their fighting spirit momentarily falters as they take in the Monster staring them down with far too many eyes and far too many teeth.
"FIGHT ME!!!" The Monster yells out as it charges for Carrot, raising a front limb to crush her into pulp.
But Root reacts quickly, launching roots from each of his limbs straight into the Monster's side. However, the assault only manages to push him slightly off course.
Luckily, that is enough room for Carrot to dodge out of the way of the strike, causing it to crash into the ground, leaving a deep crater and causing the building to shake once again.
Carrot doesn't waste the opportunity to reach forward and brush her hand against the Monster's limb.
Her power takes hold immediately and the Monster 𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘭𝘴 out as every single fibre of it's body simultaneously breaks.
"YESSS!!! MORE!!" The Monster screams as it pounces at Carrot, it's broken body having healed itself almost in the same instant that it was broken.
The Monster reaches her before anyone can do anything to stop it and all she can do to defend herself is hold out one of her hands, activating her power as it ploughs into her, it's weight enough to crush her even with a broken body.
However, it only manages crush her extended arm as it is stopped right before it reaches her body by an entire wall flying into it and pushing it away from the Wards and through the opposing wall, launching it outside of the building with another resounding crash.
The two teens look in the direction the wall came from and can't contain their relief at seeing someone they can trust to help.
"Yeah yeah, I'm here. You two should go evacuate with the rest, I'll deal with big and ugly. That's an order by the way, you'll only get in the way here." His dismissive words hurt to hear, but they know them to be true.
"Magne! We can help! I can hurt him!" Carrot calls out, but Magne just gives her a dry look before unsubtly glancing from her broken left arm to her legs that are still healing from being broken.
"...Right. Just do what I say will ya? Cuz in case you didn't realise, hurting Crawler doesn't really matter, and he's not exactly going to be stopped by wood, so just leave this to me, kay? Have some faith for Christ's sake, I'm awesome, I got this."
With those words of encouragement, he stops interacting with the two teenagers entirely and walks up to the broken wall, looking down three floors to see Crawler on the street staring right back up at him, uncaring of the civilians running away around him.
Meanwhile, Carrot is struggling with indecisiveness.
But in the end, as one of her mentors jumps out of the building to face a Monster alone, she looks down at her broken and bleeding arm and is forced to accept the painful truth.
There is nothing she can do here.
With nothing but self hatred in her heart, she turns away and flees, saying nothing as Root takes her undamaged hand and wraps it over his shoulder as they both leave to seek safety.
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A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!
Got halfway through this chapter and then the writing combined with the sad music I was listening to made me too depressed to keep writing and I had to sleep it off lmao, so if there seems to be a change in tone about halfway through, that would be why.
Oh yeah, I'm curious, did this third person perspective feel more immersive? was it preferable? I'm not gonna change the POV of this fic, but it'll be useful information to know for the future.
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