Chapter Text
Lucas couldn’t sleep, and it’s by luck that tonight Amicia couldn’t either. Their short exchange of midnight pleasantries inspires them to take the small walk to a nearby field to watch the stars flickering over the dark landscape of the sky. They know where to look for their favorites, their routine insomnia becoming so regular these past few years that they had the ever-moving portrait of stars memorized to heart. It’s in this very spot that they’ll stay until exhaustion eventually overcomes nightmares, forcing them to walk back to the house on tired limbs. It’s a tradition Lucas will miss once he sets off to the city in less than a month, on his own journey to finally be recognized as more than an apprentice even if the idea of doing so alone made his mind heavy with many worries and insecurities, all which seem to amplify whenever he thinks of leaving his family behind. He especially worries about Amicia, who has been growing antsier in the passing days, but he hadn’t the nerve to ask if it was because of him.
Her soft sighs fill the air in between bouts of biting her lower lip. He asks her what’s wrong, and fair skin dyes a warm color that nearly travels up to her ears, hiding the little freckles that adorn her face along the way. Curious remarks catch on the edge of his tongue about her sudden shyness, but she manages to pull it together enough to explain the issue before he can ask.
“I met someone.” Those words echo into the air ominously, heightened by the uncomfortable shift of her shoulders. She starts again, with more contemplation, almost as if she’s afraid to mention it. “He asked me to marry him.”
It’s an unexpected confession, immediately catching him by surprise. Lucas thought the days of her terrifying him were behind them, but Amicia still promises to be the death of him one way or another, perhaps without ever realizing that she’s the reason his chest is tightening to where he feels like he’ll choke.
Amicia clicks her tongue, a hint of frustration in her agitated movements as she runs her fingers through the grass before turning her head up to the night sky in search of twinkling stars. “He said ‘I was the most beautiful woman he’s ever laid eyes on.’ Can you believe that?”
Lucas can believe it. Azure eyes, brunette hair twisted into a small braid that barely reaches her shoulders and bound by the same dark pink ribbon – one he’s surprised she hasn’t tossed by now – that she’s always had. She’s still as tall and bold as ever, having the height and strong demeanor of an amazon. He’s still trying to catch up in both traits and at this rate he’s not sure he ever will. But she’s undoubtedly beautiful, even if she gets overly surprised and flustered when someone points it out as if she didn’t expect someone else would notice what he’s always known.
It’s with self-pity that his heart aches at the idea that someone else should finally notice and have the courage to do what he couldn’t and act on those feelings.
“Did you accept?”
The question tastes like poison in his throat, coating him in murk like viscous mucus from a rat’s nest. It metastasizes to settle heavily over his chest causing his heart to sink.
“Are you mad?” Amicia asks, her words frantic and jumbled in her rush to deny his implications. “Of course not! I only just learned his name.”
Lucas can hardly hold in his laugh at her panicked sways and fidgets. He’s also unable to believe how any human’s eyes could blow open so big like a startled rabbit. He feels bad for laughing at her distress but it feels too good to replace the burning feeling under his ribcage with the memory of her gaping mouth.
“It’s not funny, Lucas.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s not what I was expecting. It’s so irrational,” he says despite knowing well how love could cloud the mind.
“You’re telling me. He proposed in front of the entire market,” she explains but every word only makes him more amused as she speaks with the same confused panic he could only imagine was going through her at the moment. “Then he had some grand speech about being a war hero with a bunch of money and said that he was going to keep trying to woo me until I said yes. Anyhow, I accidentally knocked him over into a puddle trying to escape.”
Of course, Lucas thinks. That sounds like her.
Despite the hilarity of the situation, he worries about her safety especially when he wouldn’t be around to help her should something happen.
“Have you told your mother?”
He’s sure he must’ve grown another head by the look she gives him. “You should already know the answer to that.”
“I’m serious. If he plans to pursue you so aggressively, he could get violent or something.”
“Don’t worry. He didn’t seem dangerous, just annoying. Besides if I told mother, she would probably make some mention about courting…and marriage,” she explains, distastefully fumbling a little in her words along the way.
“Do you not want to get married?”
“No. Not when my father would bring up stories of courting my mother and not now. And definitely not to a man whose only promise is money and stories of how many people he’s killed. That sort of thing…isn’t something to be proud of,” she mentions with an offhanded whisper, haunted in a memory that takes a few seconds to recover from. “Either way, it’s not something I really try to think about.”
Childish fantasy makes him prod her on the subject a little more. “Really? Not even once?”
She hums softly. “Maybe once or twice when I was a little girl, but it was always forgotten when I realized that meant having to follow someone else’s lead.” A mocking laugh. “I guess listening never came naturally to me even then.”
“I can imagine,” he agrees honestly. Amicia seems like the type of person to hate being tied down, not out of rejection of love, he assumes, but for her own freedom of choice and personhood. Even now, it’s hard to imagine her playing the main role of a traditional homemaker – a mother doesn’t seem quite as impossible given the love she carefully crafted for her brother over the years – but to give herself to a man still seems strange to imagine to his rational mind. For his heart, well, it yearns even in the unlikeliest of circumstances.
“In the end, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure anyone who’d be interested would change their mind once they knew that I hate wearing dresses and I can’t cook extravagant meals and my sewing skills still leave much more to be desired in elegancy as compared to my hunting ones.”
It’s not with disappointment that she mentions these shortcomings but rather amusement, and it manages to bring a meek smile to his face as he recalls days of her throwing ripped and tree snagged clothes in his direction for fixing.
“It isn’t that hard to sew,” he tells her, probably for the hundredth time this past year as she failed over and over again to pick up the hobby. It wasn’t that she was terrible with a needle and thread, she could speedily patch together raw material like her life depended on it - it obviously had at one point – but the delicate finger work and forethought to actually embroider pretty images and straight lines escape her frequently. “It’s about having a steady hand, like when closing a wound.”
“See, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. You know so much more than me. You’re very talented.” She laughs, her eyes lit bright even in the absence of a fire, and it strokes the smallest part of him that would dare tease her.
“If you really want, I can try to show you again. Who knows – you might change your mind and need the skills after all.”
“You sound exactly like the maids back home,” she says in a huff, throwing her hands back into the dirt behind her to hold her weight against her arms.
“I’m only kidding, Amicia.”
“This isn’t something I’m just going to change my mind on at the drop of a hat, Lucas,” she argues.
“I believe you.”
Amicia sighs as if releasing all her frustration only to replace it with an emotion that Lucas fears more than her anger as she relaxes her face into a sad, thoughtful expression. Thousands of alerts start going off in his head, desperately searching for what could possibly triggered her silence. Most likely him, for not respecting her decision on the matter.
“Hey, I’m sorry if I took it too far. It was supposed to be a joke. Not a very good one I admit,” he rambles, but she shakes her head, signifying that it was probably best for him to stop talking before he makes it worse.
“It’s not you,” she replies, her laugh almost a ghost of a whisper, saddened. She scrunches her brow, eyes squinted in a thought he didn’t even know where to start deciphering. Shaky hands draw to her midsection, not from hunger like usual, and he thinks she could render her own skin open if not for the vest fastened around her to fight off the cold.
“I was thinking it’s probably for the best that I feel this way about it,” she mentions, and he guesses that the idea of marriage must still be tickling in the corners of her mind, causing anxiety in her. “I’d probably be expected to…be marital,” she answers.
Lucas fidgets as he follows her line of thought, stomach fluttering, heart rate picking up higher, the nervous gulp needing to be swallowed down before she can hear.
“It was to protect Hugo, so I don’t really regret it, but there’re so many scars.”
The smile she makes is small, hardly present on her face, obviously to make herself feel better. If Arnaud were here, he’d probably tell her that a solider carries scars with pride; and to some degree, she probably did take pride in them or at least didn’t seek to blame herself for having them. Alas, she isn’t a soldier anymore. That life was forgotten behind days of warmth and breezes filled with laughter. These past few years of normalcy gave her mind time to actually acknowledge the scars, not only for their physical appearance but for everything that was done while gaining them, even the unforgivable things, as a sort of peace and a brittle, un-promised comfort to life slowly returned.
Those same wounds carry their tolls in other ways, sometimes not showing up in the body until years later in the form of dull aches on the joints. Or, the shape of a slant and faded white line crossed over the stomach, arms, and legs from a count’s blade. Or, a pink scar ridged across the temple like a jagged knife edge. She had so many scratches and scars laced over the years that at some point he had maintained a journal documenting which were new, which had made a permanent home on her body, and how they were obtained.
Luckily, those days seemed behind them.
A little over two years, she’s never wounded herself to the point he felt panicked again. She’d have a small cut here or there from working on the house or a sore stomach if she accidentally took a hit from an animal she was hunting. All things that could be cured with a rinse or balm.
It's outside those panicked moments, when the lens of a doctor leaves him, that he can recall how warm her skin feels to the touch, how perfectly strong and smooth, and any memory of the millions of wounds – opened and healed over and over again – disappears.
“They’re not that bad.”
“They are.”
“They’re not, Amicia. I treated many of them and very well at that, so trust me when I say it’s not bad. You’re-“ Lucas bows his head, embarrassed of his own thoughts as he reminds himself that he shouldn’t think like that when she was a patient, let alone mention the innocent follies of a youthful mind.
“I’m what?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on tell me.”
“Well, you’re—" Brash, impatient, strong, always needing a caring hand, undoubtedly beautiful, “still very feminine.”
“Lucas, please,” she interrupts. Her cheeks flare another brilliant shade of red so dark that in a silly sort of way he’s proud to have caused it while the other part of him is still embarrassed to have admitted it out loud.
“I mean I grew up with a doctor,” he backpedals. “So, it isn’t like I’m unfamiliar with the human body in all its bearings. Compared to others, yours—”
“Change the subject please!” It isn’t a request but a demand as she falls onto her back like she could escape his explanation. She drags her palms over her face in a desperate struggle to cleanse it from embarrassment. And he’s a bit thankful she stopped him before he said something really stupid. “Dear lord if mother heard us discussing something like that, I’d never hear the end of it.”
“But you asked!”
“Lucas,” she grumbles.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he apologizes but he guesses the dopey grin on his face at her reaction doesn’t make the sincerest expression for an apology. Yet the slightly annoyed look she makes is still preferable to the depressed one she was making before.
“You’re a terrible person when you want to be,” she complains, and it stretches his smile wider as he falls into the grass next to her, back sticking to the slightly damp dirt, head turned towards the light next to him rather than the stars, the pout on her face begging him even more to keep her from falling into her own head again.
“That’s your influence, I think.”
“You can’t possibly blame me for the way you turned out.”
“If I had to estimate, it’s at least 80 you, 20 me.”
She counters, “Come on. I’ve only known you a little over a fifth of your life, so it’s obviously 20 percent me at most.”
“Fair point. I’ll give you 75-25.”
“65-35.”
“The lowest I’m willing to go is 70.”
“…”
“…”
It’s a laugh that finally breaks the lull in their argument, sputtering and childish in a way that he once thought would always be void from them after everything that happened.
“I guess…I did drag you around a lot,” Amicia remarks. She draws her hand to her head, slim fingers playing along the valley of her hair line, focused on locks of brunette whose sole purpose is to cover the pink scar marked in his journal as making a permanent home on her head. “It was a bit selfish of me to put you through all that. More than once.”
He shrugged, downplaying it all, like always. “It all worked out one way or another.”
“Barely. If not for you, I’d probably gone mad,” and her hands are itching, twitching at her flesh. “It’s like every day, I was adding more and more damage, and it’s still there despite how wonderful everything has been since we came here. That’s how I know that there are scars here too. Inside. Even if no one can see them, they are there. And when people find out,” she sighs. “It’s still so difficult to trust people, and I’m not sure if there are many people who would want to be around me and be my friend if they found out how broken it is up there and why.”
“Is that how you see yourself—broken? Amicia, you’re not broken,” he says reassuringly despite knowing too well that she’s right. There are just as many scars in her head as on her body even if he can’t count them. He knows because he’s the one that had to make her a poultice time and time again to buy her even a few hours of sleep when she’d be plague by memories of her sins. He knows how many times he’s sat out here with her, trying to find peace in between whispered words and every story of the constellations he could recall if only to get her to stop thinking about everything for a moment, and he can instinctively count the seconds she needs to hold in the deep breath she took just now to calm herself. It’s almost natural the way his mind ticks up to five and his body exhales with her.
Despite all of that, he would never say she’s broken.
Because personal experience tells how kind she can be and protective over her loved ones; and outside the chaos of the world, she’s thoughtful and caring, always slowing down her long strides for him to keep up when they walk to town together. How she took on small jobs to surprise him with a novel she had no intention of reading herself – for a birthday he didn’t even remember – all because she noticed his eyes longing for it. How she brought home a pile of herbs, enough to fill a large egg basket, and brewed up the most awful tea he’s ever tasted in his life all because he had gotten sick after convincing him to play in the rain with her and Hugo. She was guilty and desperate to help in some way, and Lucas can still remember her pouting and complaining after the best help she could offer was standing aside and letting Beatrice take over his care, not like that stopped her and Hugo from bugging him about his health in the middle of the night for the entire week.
And it hurts that all she can see are the cracks of broken porcelain that make up her past. “Do you hear me? You’re not.”
“It’s okay. I’m not in denial enough to think I have it all together.” She releases a shuddery breath. “I know it was necessary but,” she continues, closing her eyes tight so the gloss shining over them won’t turn into tears. She so softly rubs at her lashes, smearing away any remaining wetness before repeating her breathing exercises the exact way he taught her until she can soothe herself. “It’s still hard coming to peace with it.”
“I know, Amicia, but you’re not alone in this. Between the war and the plague, there are probably thousands of people who feel the same way you do and would understand.”
“You really believe that?” she asks, and it’s so hopeful and soft almost like a prayer on the verge of being answered.
“Yes,” he answers, a little guilty because it’s something he has to remind himself to believe in for his own sake; and if he has learned anything, it’s that the world can be cruel even if faced with hope, and he laughs unconfidently at his own self-help advice. “But I might be a little biased, seeing as I’m probably a bit damaged too.”
“No,” Amicia comforts him. “You’re wonderful. You’re nothing but kind. Thoughtful. And reliable.”
“And so are you.”
“Not always,” she highlights.
“But more than enough.”
“You’re more so.”
And it’s silly, almost pathetic, how the two of them sit there, trading compliments and licking at each other’s wounds, trying to convince one another that they’d be good enough for someone.
“It’s like you said. It’s hard to see but it’s in there. Like tonight. I kept having this dream, crossing an old bridge, and it breaks right above a room full of rats,” he recalls with a shudder, both at the nightmare and at the wind but it’s quickly replaced with the comfort of warmth as Amicia wriggles her hand into his and squeezes tight so he won’t lose it in his shaky grip. “The worst part isn’t even really the rats or the dark, but the fact you’re not there. I’m so used to you being there to help drive them away that my mind goes completely blank. Then, that’s it. Game over, not with a blaze but a whimper.” His scoff at his own fragility is short. “It’s a bit pathetic.”
“It’s not. It’s reasonable and terrifying, and it’s my fault.”
“It’s not your fault. I chose to follow you!” he reminds her. “Besides, it wasn’t all bad, looking back on it. I mean it was pretty awful, but I saw things most other alchemists could only dream of even if I thought I was going to piss my pants a lot of the time.”
And he’s happy that such vulgarity manages to bring even the slightest snort of amusement from her.
“But my point is, I think it’s probably more common than you think to have scars in your mind. And if you want it then I don’t think it would be impossible to find people who’d understand; and I’m not sure how much it’s worth, but I certainly am glad to be considered your friend.”
Her gaze is soft, and thoughtful, searching him with a gentle and sincere smile that makes his body hot. She hums softly, a familiarly gentle tune that he often wakes up to in the morning. “You might be right.”
“Have I ever steered you wrong?”
“Not when it mattered,” she replies, neither realizing how she draws her fingers between his or that he had already squeezed back into her palm. “So, does that mean you’ve given thought to it?”
“It?”
“Making friends, getting married when you go off to the college. If you meet a pretty girl there as good at alchemy as you and as knowledgeable about the world, then you should probably ask her to marry you.”
Lucas chuckles, not from amusement. He was embarrassed and his body thought it best to release the sputtery, nervous sound against his will at her wild imaginings, as if he has to go that far to find someone like that. It boggles his mind at how oblivious she is to the fact that she’s near perfect at alchemy, needing only one demonstration to replicate his teachings, and at how oblivious she is to his own feelings. Lucas isn’t sure if it’s a blessing or a curse that she is.
“Maybe.”
And though she’s the one that pressed the situation, he can’t help noticing that Amicia is slowly becoming troubled by his answer, her face taut like when she listens to him read about alchemical principles. It’s with confusion that she palms at her chest though he isn’t entirely positive of the reason why, and he’d hate for hope to boil over when it most likely means nothing.
“I don’t think that’ll happen though,” he says in attempts to mediate the situation and vanish the sudden quietness blanketed before them.
“No?”
He scratches at his hair, brushing the careless, curly sway of it from his eyes. “It’s not that I don’t think it’s possible, but it feels a bit strange to think about after all this time,” and it’s a lie. A convincing lie to say to her but not to himself. He’s thought about it more than once, each time she runs a hand through his hair or casually sits next to him to rest and keep him company while he studies whenever Hugo exhausts himself for the day.
“I don’t know. I’m fairly satisfied with the way things are in my life. I think that’s probably why I’m having these dreams. It must be my brain warning me not to leave.”
“No changing your mind,” she warns, pinching at his arm, and he has to rub the spot because she can never remember that he’s much more fragile than herself. Though it hurts, he’ll surely think back on it with warmness after he leaves.
“Don’t get me wrong. I still really want to go. I get excited even thinking about it. A real school, with real alchemists,” he explains cheerfully. “But a part of me, gets homesick thinking about it sometimes. I’ve really felt lucky to be here with everyone, and the idea of that changing all at once is a bit frightening.”
“I understand,” she says. “Between you and me, it’s a relief to have you leave such a positive review about your time with us.”
He shrugs. “Well, there could’ve been a few more rats if you ask me.”
It’s always a victory when he manages to humor her. “I’ll be sure to find some right away, good sir.”
“Don’t even think about it. I still jump at field mice,” he admits, his heart burning the last time one of the little blasted rodents found its way into his rucksack. “Honestly, it feels strange going off on my own.”
“It won’t be forever.”
“Of course not. So that means you can’t go accepting that man’s proposal while I’m gone.” Or anyone else’s. “I think I’d get a bit lonely if I came back and you weren’t here.”
It’s as close to a confession as he can muster, and it took all his courage to even put the words together. And he knows it’s still not enough to get across how he feels. He doesn’t think he’ll ever reach that level to express himself as proven by the chuckle that leaves her.
“You have nothing to worry about since it’s not going to happen. Not with him, or anyone. So, prepare to resign yourself to living with an old spinster the rest of your life,” she proclaims loudly, which makes him shake his head.
How could she possibly go from being only able to roughly stitch raw materials together to becoming a master wool worker is beyond him, yet he doesn’t mention it instead he reminds her, “It’s not like you’d be the only spinster living here in that scenario.”
“Yes, but it’s not quite the same for you. No one cares if a man is single. No. You, you’d simply be a bachelor with an unobtainable heart and eyes only for discovery who happens to do some needling work on the side.”
It’s like she already has the entire story planned even before she finishes her sentence, forever making tales in her own head even after the world tossed enough adventure to last a lifetime.
That trait of hers makes it easier to stop the inklings of pain thrumming its way through his chest from turning into pessimism because she doesn’t realize she has one fatal flaw in her story. That being his heart is so very much obtainable even if it doesn’t seem like there’s much room there behind his love for studies. It took a while for even him to find that spot after meeting her.
“Please, Amicia, I’m attempting to humor you. I may not be that good at it, but the least you could do is play along.”
“Alright, who am I to waste such valiant comedic efforts,” she teases, voice almost as light and melodic as a harp. “We’ll be the two merry spinsters, who’re happy with the family they have. In their little house. On their little mountain. Above their little town. The end. Not my most exciting work I’ll admit but I suppose heavenly after everything we’ve been through.”
Lucas wonders if he could bring it up now when he has no means or a plan to really see through the idea that has been floating around his mind ever since Sophia last visited, offering them both time at the steer if only to go around the harbor.
“It’s not like it has to only be here, Amicia.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been thinking. If I become a magister,” he begins, and she’s so quick to correct him that it almost startles him.
“When.”
“When I become a magister, I was thinking of chartering a boat, or maybe buying one, and going traveling. I hear Italy is nice in the summer, and they’re supposed to have quite a collection of old texts.”
He also hopes doing something daring like visiting another country would help him become a more rounded person.
“Sailing?” she asks, and it’s with an excitement that he hasn’t seen in ages, that he only remembers her having on the boat with Sophia, with her eyes focused on waves just as blue as them. “To visit the world without having to run from it. That…sounds nice,” she sighs peacefully. “Italy, huh?”
“Or across the Mare Nostrum to Africa. See the animals and nature there. Meet new people with new ideas, perhaps.”
“That definitely doesn’t sound bad.”
“I was thinking that maybe we could go together. I’m sure Hugo would love it.”
"Do you think he could? Like really could?” Amicia asks, and it’s as if reality drops back on both of them, harsh and fast, knocking them down from daydreams. "With the Macula, I mean. I don't know if I'd ever be able to take him back on the road or the sea. It…it would be too much of a risk.”
“Didn’t you say whatever happened on the island cured him?”
“I…I don’t know. Not entirely yet, I think. It definitely seems to be diminishing over time since he’s told me he doesn’t hear the rats as much anymore. So maybe one day it may completely stop, or it may never. But I feel like we shouldn’t push it. No matter how much it hurts to listen to him beg.”
Of course, he realizes. He knew that but was still hopeful enough to suggest it, thinking maybe if they kept to only the coastal cities that it’d be okay to let Hugo outside the small cage that makes up their home, like the young boy has been pleading Amicia for more and more with age.
“Perhaps,” Lucas pauses, letting the thought die in him as her eyes steady on him. It’d be too selfish for him to ask for her to join if only for a few days with just the two of them, wanting so desperately for more time with her. As standing, that foolish request would lead to an immediate rejection, not that he could blame her. He’d probably make the same decision. Hugo’s safety was worth much more than indulging his bleeding heart. It also wouldn’t be fair to the younger boy to go off together on the adventure he’s been craving. “Perhaps when he’s older then.”
“Maybe. In either case, don’t feel as if you have to wait for us. We’d hate to hold you back.”
“Always trying to rid yourself of me.”
“But it’s true. You spent so long helping us, you deserve your own future.”
She’s right, of course. For so long he’s been somewhat stagnant, his days spent studying in the house or following around the siblings, never really having much of a goal other than to become an alchemist, not sure what he wanted to do permanently once he reached that goal. Helping people, obviously, but where and how and to what societal degree, he didn’t know yet.
“I know, but it’s hard to imagine something so far away from now. All I know is that I’m here with you now, and well, we’ll probably be here tomorrow hopefully.”
“Why the hopefully, Lucas?”
He sighs and adjusts his back more comfortably. “I don’t know. Bad habit I suppose.”
“We’ll definitely be here tomorrow. All of us. I’ll toss you out of bed tomorrow morning if that's what it takes to prove it.”
“That’s not necessary,” he informs her.
But it’s not like he wasn’t speaking the truth. It’s so hard to imagine any distant future after having to take everything as it comes every day and living without really knowing if there was going to be a tomorrow or if they'd finally make a mistake so large that there'd be no recovery. Death is something that they so often only escaped by luck, having to go to one desolate town after another. The only constant thing in his life for a long time now was this family that so readily took him in. His kind magistra, a child who so readily looked up to him as an older brother, and Amicia, who probably left the biggest impression of the three. And the truth is, a part of him would be fine continuing his work whether on the road or at this house, as long as she was there, even if she didn’t accept his affections, and even if he knew how utterly ridiculous it was to continue to torture himself with these unrequited feelings.
“Hey,” Lucas interrupts the quiet, his mouth going against his own better judgment to dare ask, “Have you ever thought what you would do when Hugo gets married?”
“This topic again?”
“It was in my head,” he responds sorrowfully.
And he had to know what she envisioned for the future. To see if this one-sided love was worth holding.
“It would do better staying there.”
“You’re the one who brought up the future, and I was curious as to what you would do when that happens.”
“Can’t you let me have peace for five minutes, Lucas,” she exasperates, exhaling in exhaustion at the subject.
“You can tell me if you ever thought about it.”
“No, and I was hoping I never would,” she huffs, swatting her hand around as if she can rid the air of the very idea that he implanted in her mind about a little brother getting married.
“He has a lot of…hobbies that could be seen as romantic. There’s already one particular blonde girl that hangs around the town garden always asking about him when I deliver medicine to her mother,” Lucas tells her.
“It wouldn’t happen to be the same one responsible for that blue ribbon wrapped around his arm lately, would it?”
“Obviously,” Lucas tells her. “So, I’d give you maybe five or seven more years before you have to start wedding planning,” he reasons out loud.
“Do you have to remind me? Ugh, it’d be quicker to stab me in the heart than this.”
“I guess I’m just wondering what you plan to do when he grows up and can start doing things on his own?”
“He’d never betray me like that,” she grumbles, and it’s possibly the cutest thing he’s seen in a pitiable way. A mom not wanting her hatchling to leave the nest. She sighs, releasing her denial. “I’m not sure but if he ever did grow up and find someone then I’d be happy for him. He would…need someone who understands, like me or my mother,” and it’s with a silent reflection that she adds, “or like you. If he ever found that then I wouldn’t stop him from…going…as long as he was safe and happy. That’s all I ever wanted for him in the end.”
“Amicia.”
She smiles - a genuine one. “After that, I’ll probably stay with mother and take care of her. Although if she remarries then I’m sure she’d want her privacy. If that happens, I’m not entirely sure what my first move would be but I’d figure it out pretty fast I’m sure.”
Lucas wonders if it would finally be okay then. If all that happens, would she finally be at a place where he could ask her to join him? If he would be enough by then that she wouldn’t mind sharing her lead with him, slowing her steps enough to create a pace comfortable enough for the both of them to maintain.
“…There’d still be the boat.”
It’s a desperate offer, one made on the smoldering ashes of dying hope, and it's numbing him inside and out to the world around him. He has to consciously remind himself to breathe, and it’s the little drumming of her fingers adjusting in his grasp that brings him back to reality.
”True,” she says, and he fears that perhaps she knows just how low he’s fallen, how readily he impaled himself on the double edge sword of love. If she is going to rip his heart asunder with it then she’s certainly taking her time pulling the blade. Not that he would have any power to stop her. That fear is dissolved by her next question, slow and unsure. “Would there…still be room for me on there by then?”
Never since moving to the cabin has there been such relief flooding in his veins.
“In five years? Definitely,” he answers. “Though, I’m sure you’d come right aboard and make your own room either way. Not like I’d be able to stop you,” he admits. The very same way he couldn't stop her from unintentionally burrowing her way into his unobtainable heart.
“So then, is it going to be a big boat?”
“Huh?”
“The boat!” she repeats. “How big will it be?”
It doesn’t take long for her bait to sink in, and he rolls his eyes only with the utmost fondness. As always. “Oh, the biggest.”
Her free hand climbs up his arm, latching tightly onto his bicep, and she finds a comfortable spot to lean her head against his shoulder. It isn’t a new position to them, they’ve always had no qualms over touching one another, yet he’s never been more aware of how close she is until now.
“Will we become pirates?” she quips playfully.
“The dastardliest pirates on the open water,” he tells her, feeding into the fantasy with a rushed fervor that if he was watching himself, he’s positive he’d get second-hand embarrassment at his eagerness. The only redeeming quality in this situation is that he thinks he’s gotten better at throwing his voice after all the time playing with her and Hugo. “With my alchemy and you at the helm, we’d be unstoppable,” he pronounces, breaking his act to throw in a soft “probably” at the end that makes her shake with a chuckle.
“Do you think we’ll run into Sophia out there?”
“Absolutely, and our boat will be so grand that she’ll throw herself into the sea out of envy. Then, we’ll have two boats for us and our most dastardly crew,” he tells her, thankful that the Sea Scorpion herself isn’t around to hear this or else she might threaten to toss him overboard for the very idea, it being a joke doing nothing to prove his innocence.
“Nothing but the best for us I see.”
“We’ll have deserved it.” After all this, she deserved something. Something just for her. “And when we’re done stealing all the world’s treasures, we can look up at the stars just like this. I promise.”
He makes the mistake of meeting her gaze, and she smiles so preciously. It leaves his brain slow, empty except for that image. “See, you’re not so bad at planning out the future.”
Lucas turns his attention upward to hide the redness creeping up his neck.
“That’s only if you’re there,” and if the nervousness and hesitancy in his voice doesn’t give him away then his rapidly beating heart will. “I still wouldn’t really know what to do on my own.”
She doesn’t respond right away, choosing to tilt her head to take him in, her eyes searching with a sudden wide-eyed recognition that leaves his brain fuzzy, but it’s quickly hidden behind a small laugh, a sweet sound, equivalent to a choir for him.
“In that case, I definitely won’t get married, if that’s what’s waiting for us.”
And as she holds onto him tighter, he has to agree that it doesn’t sound so bad even if they aren’t married. They’d be together, and he makes a wish on a star for just that much, not knowing that Amicia thought – if just for a fleeting moment that night – maybe marriage didn’t sound so bad.