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lewkwoodnco · 22 hours

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how did it end? - anthony lockwood x reader

Come one, come all.

She felt vilified, commodified into some grotesque circus show for the sadistic, satisfied smiles of everyone else. Just as much of a spectacle as she was all those years ago.

It's happening again.

Look at them. Safe, and assured, and happy. It was revolting. They didn't understand an ounce of what she went through, they never would.

And all anyone wants to know is...

After today they would go home to their other friends and family and smugly recount the battered, fragile mess they ran into that afternoon, sick with glee as they described the aimless circles she wore into the floors, a pathetic husk of the agent she once was.

...how did it end?

a/n: will update this once i wake up!

warnings/tropes: tw death, canon divergent, tw death i MEAN it, the empty grave spoilers, hurt/comfort, lotta angst

word count: 4.6k!

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The beginning was etched into his ribs. He could never forget it. In the following weeks when everyone wanted to know all about it, they would give the same humorously vague answer, conveniently leaving out the smaller, more important details they held close to their chests. We met at a florist's, they would say, and decided to start an agency. And how they handled the string of hauntings along Mulberry Lane in a week when agencies far stronger than theirs had been at it for months? Well, that was simply the product of her experience and his keen eye.

What they chose to leave out was this: after multiple failed attempts at registering his agency with DEPRAC, Lockwood had reached his wit's end and had decided to give up on the venture. Turns out, DEPRAC wasn't quite tolerant of budding agencies with only one member. With little else to do, he decided to take a mid-morning trip to the all-too-familiar Kensel Green Cemetery. Perhaps something in him sought forgiveness from their hollow husks.

Once he had reached, it felt to be in poor taste to enter empty-handed. He had crossed the street to the florist on the other side and picked out a small bouquet of white chrysanthemums.

"Chrysanthemums?"

Lockwood flinched badly. He looked up to see a surprisingly familiar face critically eyeing the now-battered bouquet, its thin plastic slick in his clammy palms. He recognised her the way half of London did - from the papers. Bright enough to make a name for herself through especially complicated cases, her rise through the ranks from smaller agencies to the Fittes Agency had been sparsely documented through the local media. The last of the glowing commendations even alluded to the position of team supervisor being within her reach at the tender age of fifteen. In a world plagued with fear, she had one of the best lives any parent could wish for their child - that is, until tragedy struck.

Perhaps the most curious detail of it all was the proximity of the incidents. After her first harrowing escape from a badly botched case where she was the sole survivor of her team, the city's sympathies were stirred for the poor, unsuspecting agent who, even now, brimmed with promise. There was a short inquiry, it was an intriguing piece of news, but it all blew over within the week. No matter, thought most people. Perhaps she'd have to wait a year or two more to be team supervisor.

It was barely a month before the next incident, nearly identical to the last, except in the nature of the cases. This time, considerably more eyebrows were raised. It was one thing to explain one incident away, but two? This inquiry lasted a solid month, and in the end, she was declared innocent, but by then she had unfortunately been severed from Fittes. Still, Rotwell Agency had happily snapped her up, until the third incident two weeks later.

As expected, that was the final blow on her strained career, extinguishing any hope of her once again harnessing the renown she once held. As each inquiry progressed, everyone wanted to know: what happened? Why did it happen? How did it all come crashing down so spectacularly? She didn't come out unscathed physically either. A close brush with Ghost Touch in the last incident left the nerves in the outer corner of her right eye paralysed. It not only reduced her normal vision but also left her Sight permanently disfigured.

In the papers, more than one outlet had the gall to suggest that perhaps it was deserved. Perhaps the incidents weren't as accidental as she would like everyone to believe. While the media spun nauseating defamatory narratives, each one more cruel than the last, the public image of Y/N L/N began to take a life of its own, twisting and warping into something horrid. At this point, Lockwood had not expected Rotwell's to go through the effort or disgrace of letting her go, and twelve days after the inquiry had finished, it was reported that she had resigned. It was almost impressive how long she had stuck it out. Lockwood had heard about these kinds of things through the grapevine - agents being forced into early retirement - but had never seen an example documented as liberally as this.

The saving grace of the events was that the whole ordeal was over in three months. All before her sixteenth birthday. And now here she was, standing feet away from him across a florist's shop, London's most wanted ex-agent. Two years on, she seemed just as lithe and alert as she did in the articles published years back, except for the hard edge of the newfound intensity in her rheumy eyes.

"Quite the hothouse flower, isn't it? Delicate. Fragile."

Lockwood smiled hesitantly. "It just needs a little extra care."

She smiled back, though she seemed unsure, and was quiet for a long time. Her gaze flickered to the chrysanthemums.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

Lockwood thought back to the articles ripping her to shreds, the ones she never refuted, as if she had been paralysed by...something.

"I'm sorry for yours."

She stared at him blankly for a minute, as if she didn't understand, and then bowed her head. It felt miraculously easy to talk to each other as if they had stumbled through their grief towards this bittersweet meeting.

"You'd be better off with a hardier flower in this weather. Something strong...something tough." She adjusted the bouquet of yellow irises in her arms, bursting with joy against the grey backdrop of Lockwood's pale face, black suit, and white flowers. "Especially with Mulberry Lane being only a street over."

By then, the Mulberry Lane hauntings had picked up significant steam and media attention. Once assigned to only Fittes and Rotwell, it eventually attracted the attention of nearly every agency in the city. What started as a regular haunting in one house became a whole street of hauntings, stemming only once DEPRAC had cordoned the street off with iron barricades. Naturally, only agents were allowed on the premises, not that it stopped Lockwood from making an unofficial visit or two. The problem was, as self-assured as he was in his abilities, even he was forced to admit that this was no one-man job. But maybe, if he played his cards right...

"Yes, what a case that is..." Lockwood wandered down the aisle as she turned around to browse the other bouquets, deceptively nonchalant, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. "...been at it for weeks now."

"You're an agent?"

"Yes. Have my own agency, in fact, as of this morning."

"...is that so?"

Eventually, he persuaded her to work with him on the Mulberry Lane case. At the start of their first meeting, she mentioned that there wasn't any agency registered as Lockwood & Co., and asked if he was planning to harvest her liver, which he vehemently denied before accusing her of trying to harvest his liver in his panic. He took it as an overwhelmingly positive sign that she hadn't walked out right there and then, and was good-humoured enough to laugh about it. But the fact remained that they still weren't registered as agents under DEPRAC, and so the next Saturday night, they snuck to the Mulberry Lane gate with a pair of bolt cutters.

She clearly found the whole thing highly amusing as she held the flashlight while Lockwood struggled with the cutters.

"So...why do you want to start your own agency? Fittes and Rotwell not good enough for you?"

He struggled to catch his breath before responding. "I...I always preferred doing things my way."

"You mean the illegal way?"

"The efficient way."

They snickered quietly in the dead of the night, and with one last heave, he snapped the iron chain clean apart. Lockwood slipped inside and, with a little difficulty, helped her through. She could still make out their surroundings well enough, but in a place as infested as Mulberry Lane, it was safer to err on the side of caution.

After a few weeks of researching by day and breaking into Mulberry Lane by night, they found the Source - a dandelion whose seeds had drifted into the gardens of the other houses. Of course, they weren't about to start looking for individual dandelion seeds, but with a little bit of acid, Mulberry Lane was soon Visitor-free. Lockwood revelled in the following explosion of media attention and, upon resubmitting the application with not one but two members listed, Lockwood & Co. was finally registered under DEPRAC as an official agency.

He remembered having some photographs taken for some publication during their fifteen minutes of fame. She was sitting on a stool with Lockwood standing behind her, and they kept nervously whispering to each other between the shots.

"This is it," he muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

"What?"

"The start of the rest of our lives."

"God, you're so dramatic."

"And you're not being dramatic enough. Wasn't all this...stolen from you?"

"I never asked for it in the first place."

"This is basically your birthright."

"Lockwood."

And then they got told off for chattering away again. They sobered up and fell silent, but not before Lockwood placed a hand on her shoulder. She briefly brushed against his knuckles with her fingertips, and that shot ended up being published as the cover of the publication's issue for the month.

The media frenzy had sent hordes of applicants their way, and to celebrate the successful launch of the agency Lockwood decided to throw a party at Portland Row. He was wandering around the house in his usual button-down folded at the elbow, weaving through the crowds as he peered into the rooms looking for Y/N while being stopped and congratulated by nearly every attendee. He finally found her in the study, at his desk, reading the case journal they had started for the Mulberry Lane hauntings.

With some effort, he slipped inside, a pair of champagne flutes in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. She looked up and pushed some papers aside as he set the glasses down and uncorked the bottle. They clinked their glasses together before taking a sip, silently toasting to one another, the muffled hubbub outside the door feeling miles away.

"So," she started after her first sip, "between the champagne and the party, do you have any money left from what DEPRAC gave you?"

Lockwood chose to respond by taking another, longer sip. Once he had finished, he conveniently changed the subject.

"Speaking of DEPRAC, I haven't finalised the agency name yet. I was thinking...Lockwood & L/N?"

A piece of her heart breaks as soon as he utters those words. Dread pools in her stomach like acid. She closes the journal and sets it aside.

"Lockwood...I only wanted to help you get your agency off the ground - which, by the way, congratulations. But you don't need me anymore. You have much more reliable agents lining up at your door."

"Do you possibly think I could trust any of them as much as you?"

"I-I'm only going to be a burden." She feels hot tears behind her eyes as the pressure in her chest builds. "You deserve agents who can at least See fine."

He puts his champagne down, frowning. "But there wouldn't be any agency without you. Really, Y/N, don't be daft - what's mine is yours."

She stares at him for a beat and, despite her better judgement, caves. She doesn't say how she doesn't want some diluted, only half-there version of herself lingering on like some stench of formaldehyde in her father's old taxidermy workshop.

"Fine. I'll stay, but only if you keep my name out - I've had enough attention for a lifetime."

Thus, Lockwood & Co. was born. Over time, they took on two new employees, George Karim and Lucy Carlyle. The media followed along on their larger cases: half malice, half morbid fascination. In their downtime, they worked together to fashion a pair of special goggles for Y/N to make her Sight more receptive to supernatural triggers. It was still nowhere as sharp as it once was, but it was enough for her to no longer be solely reliant on the others. Not only did it help Y/N, but it also gave Lockwood greater peace of mind on the cases he had to sit out when his migraines were unmanageable.

As Lucy and George had soon learnt, Lockwood suffered from chronic migraines, which raged on unaffected by the prescriptions Y/N had to practically shove down his throat. While he refused to go for regular tiresome check-ups, he would reluctantly have a lie-down on evenings when the pounding in his head grew too strong.

He'd shuffle to the living room as the rest of them were heading out, carefully bundled up, and fall into a fitful, drowsy sleep until they returned. He'd listen to them quietly taking their equipment down into the basement, and Y/N would creep in to see how he was doing. He'd ask how the case went, she'd try to take his temperature, and if he was looking especially poorly, she'd press her icy cold hands onto his clammy forehead. In short, life wasn't perfect, but it wasn't terrible, and that was all they could have asked for.

If anyone were to have asked Lucy or George when it had all started to go downhill, they would have pointed to the bet with Kipps. She had been finalising some paperwork with Saunders while Lockwood had provoked Kipps into a bet, and no one had bothered to mention it until she forced it out of George the next day. If the muffled argument from the kitchen was any indication, the revelation hadn't gone over well, and they spent the rest of their day roaming around with faces like thunder. The squabble lasted a couple of days, during which she threatened and begged him to call off the bet, which he adamantly refused. She waited to broach the subject again until George and Lucy had gone to bed and it was just the two of them in the study, Lockwood sitting on the floor leaning against the armchair she had snuggled into.

"What if you lose? What if something goes wrong?"

"I won't lose because I'm the better agent."

"You realise this bet is in no way an indication of your actual skills, right? This is just some pissing contest to stroke both of your overinflated egos."

"Why? You know Kipps?"

"I was on his team for a while, yes. We've talked, but not much. My point is, you're acting like a child."

"I can't exactly back out now. Kipps would be a git about it...and people would talk."

"I thought you didn't care about what people thought."

"Of course I care. It'd be foolish not to."

She opened her mouth to retort but he cut her off, lightly resting his hand on her ghost-patterned sock.

"Just...trust me. Please?"

Again, against her better judgement, she relented and uncharacteristically dropped the topic, biting back her words as she watched Lockwood desperately scramble to make headway in the case over the next couple of days. Things finally came to a head one evening when he, dizzy with lack of sleep, slammed his head into a concrete arch, luckily escaping with only a gash through the eyebrow.

She sat him down at one of the corners of the kitchen table, first aid kit to the side as she disinfected the wound. Now that his fall had sobered him up enough to dilute his manic adrenaline spree, he was starting to feel a little ashamed. He hissed in pain as his head jerked back with her insistently pressing the antiseptic into the wound, perhaps a little harsher than was entirely necessary. He blinked through his watery eyes as he tried to break the awkward silence with his raspy voice.

"Uh, do you think...stitches?"

She manhandled his head into a few different angles before responding, her voice ominously clear of any emotion. "You'll survive."

The embarrassment was washing over him in waves now. He hadn't felt this vulnerable or stupid since Jessica's death.

"I'm sorry."

She sighed, discarded the cotton and started dressing the wound slowly, almost thoughtfully. "You don't need to apologise to me. If anything, you owe yourself an apology. That looked like it hurt."

He grimaced, then relaxed into the cold, soothing ointment she was delicately applying.

"I don't know what's gotten into you lately. Or maybe you've always been this competitive." She slipped her free hand into one of his as if holding on for support while her knees buckled underneath her. "But you're going to get yourself killed."

He folded his fingers over hers reassuringly. Her hand twisted anxiously, clumsily clutching a few of his fingers. It reminded Lockwood of how she had fumbled for his hand on their first night together at Mulberry Lane, all those months back.

"I need you to understand that I can't have it all happen again." Lockwood stared at their entangled fingers in his lap, her fingertips raw and tinged with pink. She had never opened up about the tragedies, and as he sat there, listening to her ill-disguised shaky breaths, he finally understood why. "It was - there isn't a night I don't relive it. My family...they said I was so strong to go through all of that. But I don't think I'm strong enough to go through it one last time."

But it was too little too late. Whatever boulder Fate had rolled in their direction had started to pick up speed, and was dangerously close. Less than nineteen hours later, Y/N L/N walked out of Portland Row and out of Lockwood & Co., for good.

Kipps was nothing if not a strategist, and when news reached that Lockwood & Co. was now down one member, he sent the media hounds close behind them. The front porch of Portland Row became a breeding ground for oily reporters sticking their microphones out into their faces if any of them so much as went out to collect the mail. At her old apartment two streets down, Y/N dealt with a similar infestation the same way she did the first time - dressing inconspicuously, keeping her head down and praying it would all be over sooner rather than later.

She drifted through the days with a nauseating kind of hollowness. She couldn't remember what she had been living for before Lockwood, and all that consumed her were thoughts of how it ached to be missing some phantom limb. Her partner in crime. Her best friend.

Eventually, she pulled herself together enough to make a trip to the grocery store. As soon as she entered, she regretted not making some kind of list beforehand as she aimlessly wandered through the aisles, struggling to think of something as mundane as what to fuel her body with.

"Y/N?"

She flinched badly, before turning to see two old acquaintances from Fittes. They had a short lighthearted chat, all of them ignoring the elephant in the room as they made small talk, until one of them could no longer hold themselves back.

"You know," Isla began in her sharp, piercing voice of hers, "I read the darnedest thing in the papers the other day. Said you left this agency...Look-wood & Co.?"

She gave a pained smile. "You know, you shouldn't believe everything you read."

"Oh. So it's not true?"

"No, it's...yes. I've left."

"Why?"

Her friend not-so-subtly elbowed Isla in the side. Immediately, her face started feeling too hot, and she didn't know how to tear her eyes away from Isla's sinister smile of derision.

Come one, come all.

She felt vilified, commodified into some grotesque circus show for the sadistic, satisfied smiles of everyone else. Just as much of a spectacle as she was all those years ago.

It's happening again.

Look at them. Safe, and assured, and happy. It was revolting. They didn't understand an ounce of what she went through, they never would.

And all anyone wants to know is...

...how did it end?

"What? It's one thing to leave one agency. But then two, and now three? It's enough to make people t-"

Her friend finally dragged Isla away, scolding under her breath. Isla rolled her eyes as she was taken away, calling out in a peeved voice. "Enjoy your orange juice!"

Y/N stared blankly after her, trying to put two and two together until she glanced down at the weathered carton of orange juice she was holding. Orange juice with pulp, the kind she had swiped up so many times before, half-distracted while trying to stop Lockwood from running them broke over the many little treats lining the aisles.

She stares at the carton and decides that she just might spend the rest of her life reeling from the loss of his undeniable warmth.

As luck would have it, they did meet again, though it was in less than favourable circumstances.

"You're still working on the case?"

She spun around from where she had been fiddling with the lock to Bickerstaff's mansion. She shielded her eyes from the flashlight aggressively assaulting her retinas, until a harsher version of the Lockwood she remembered came into view.

He held out his flashlight until she reluctantly accepted it, holding it in place while he pulled out that same pair of wire cutters. She sighed, deciding it would be impolite to give him the silent treatment when he was going through all this effort.

"I freelance now."

"No, I mean, you're working on the case..." With a final loud crack, the chain slithered down the door, now useless. "...alone?"

He tentatively pushed the door open while she exaggeratedly strapped on her goggles with more than a little attitude, making a big show of avoiding his gaze. It was almost enough to make him crack a smile.

"Big talk from someone who nearly got himself killed by Winkman."

If he noticed the sour resentment hidden in his voice, he didn't let on.

"Oh. You heard."

"Of course I heard. Where the hell was Lucy? Or George? Did you even tell them where you were?"

"For the record, I never told you where I was all the time."

"Oh please, you'd just awkwardly stand around all guilty until I forced you to spit it out."

He groaned. "Can't we save this for later?"

"Later? In case it's slipped your mind, I'm not going home with you after tonight." She pulled out her small cloth bag of iron filings, shouldering past Lockwood. "I'm conducting my psychical investigation myself."

"You're being stubborn."

She ripped the goggles off her head painfully, hurling them straight at Lockwood. "So what if I am? I've been biding my time for the past month, closing one eye as I watched you make the worst choices possible. When is it going to be my turn to make bad decisions? I'm done making allowances for you, Lockwood. I'm...exhausted."

She turned away, walking straight into the mansion, blind as a bat. Too blind to see what was right in front of her.

"Wait. Y/N, please, don't - NO!"

His scream echoed like a warning through the rafters. Her dying wish was finally realised. Never again would she have to go through anything like that.

After a short call from Inspector Barnes, Lucy and George hurried down to the hospital with their hearts in their throats, terrified of what awaited them. They felt a rush of relief when they found him sitting outside one of the rooms, face blank and blanched, seemingly unharmed. But that same dread returned when they noticed the goggles he was weakly holding onto. Like he barely had the strength to hold on for much longer. No Source. No Y/N.

Two weeks later at the funeral, he was standing at the podium, eyes glazed over while he read some media-friendly statement handed to him half a minute earlier. How it happened? Like walking through an icy waterfall. How was he alive? He didn't know. How it ended? The same way it began. He felt numb to the invasive camera flashes, save for an occasional stab of irritation. Even now, they salivated for any and every nugget of information. Would they never let her rest?

Come one, come all.

He was distantly aware that George and Lucy were somewhere in the front row, but at that moment he wished for nothing more than for her to be at his side, holding his hand and holding him up. It reminded him of the night before his parents' funeral when he stayed up all night wishing that Jessica would be there in the morning, ready with a hug to wash away this terrible dream. And yet, twelve years later, he stands there just as alone as he was the first time.

It's happening again.

Her last words echo hollowly inside her skull - not the ones at Bickerstaff's mansion, but from before she walked out of his life. They had got into some stupid fight about some stupid thing, and she had mentioned that all this was enough to make her want to leave, and he had seen red.

"Why? Because of Kipps? The bet?"

"Why don't you figure it out yourself since you're just so bloody brilliant, huh?"

And all anyone wants to know is...

It wasn't like her to be that angry. That was his doing. He had enraged her and pushed her to her very limits until she had finally snapped. Perhaps that was his punishment, a precursor to eternal damnation - living with this disfigured memory of his own doing.

...how did it end?

As he neared the end of his speech, he finally looked up from the script, and for a moment he thought his heart had stopped. There, at the very back of their hastily rearranged living room, was Y/N, or a translucent version of her, at least. It was nearly mid-morning, as was evident by her highly faded image, but he could still faintly make out what she was aggressively mouthing towards him. Tell them. Tell them the truth.

Too late; he's been frozen in fear long enough to imply he's finished his speech. After a light smattering of applause, foreign journalists and executives Y/N once worked with start coming up to him, shaking his hand, and giving him a reassuring pat on the back. All the while, Lockwood stares transfixed at the quickly disappearing shadow at the back of the room, ugly with rage. Coward, she yells with some invisible voice. Fucking coward.

He keeps her spirit in the walls of 35 Portland Row, perhaps because it's the only home either of them has ever known. Maybe one day he'll be strong enough to let her go, and maybe once he does, he'll hate himself for having even held on in the first place. But for now, he chooses to be selfish.

One last time.

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