I want to talk about Lucy's nightmares...
The nightmares first started happening when Mike started to pull away from her -- we see in the flashback that the first one likely happened just before December, since it's a direct parallel to the chapter "On Our Own."
And the nightmares are specifically about Confrontation, and getting trapped & held down & assaulted, BUT they are ALSO about being abandoned by everyone who cares about her. It features Paulo reducing her to the "thrill of the chase" and wanting to "have [his] way with her," and Daisy responding with "that's all she is." All real things they have said within her hearing & never apologized for! Then Mike leaves, and Alejandro shows up.
In other shown iterations of the dream, it involves Lucy being alone and trapped, running down alleyways to try and escape, only to be cornered -- not by one shadow, but many:
Alejandro is the main shadow, but the others chasing her? There are three more shadows there. Toby isn't ever featured.
It's revealed in Third Degree Burn who those other shadows belong to:
Sue and Daisy and Paulo feature prominently. Mike is nowhere to be seen in these iterations.
In Confrontation, Lucy's perspective was that Mike was the ONLY person who would step in to defend her -- from physical threats AND cruel words.
He's the only one who steps in to say something when Daisy and Paulo are talking about how much Lucy sucks. Lucy overhears all of this.
And then, during the attack, Lucy steps up to defend everyone after taking a minute to assess the situation. She tries to get Daisy to run off, she tries to step in to defend everyone when everyone else has been knocked down -- and she does pretty okay for a minute. Then she gets pinned down, clawed up, and assaulted. And I want to note that she is the only kid in their group who is told that she is desirable by this absolute creep & the only kid who is touched like that. Immediately singled out as the pretty one, and immediately pushed in a different direction instead of just being knocked around.
And none of her friends defend her here. Sue, Daisy, and Paulo all just watch and cry during this. And yes, they're kids, but from Lucy's perspective they're not even trying. Paulo tried to step up to defend Sue, Sue tried to step up to defend Paulo, and everyone is trying to keep Daisy out of it. But then Lucy just gets WAILED on and touched inappropriately with no intervention.
And all of this sticks with her. We can see her continually remember their inaction and immediately disconnect from Sue in "It's All in the Mind," from Daisy in "Rain Check," and from Paulo in "Double Down":
In Confrontation, Mike was the only one who stepped up to defend her. Physically or emotionally. So when he steps out of the picture as her friend, she starts to flash back to this traumatic thing that happened to her -- only now she knows that no one is going to step in to help.
And then Mike makes it way, way worse, by using her as his quick and inconsequential rebound in "Eternal Flame." He dumps all of his feelings on her, he says something incredibly touching and romantic, he lets her kiss him, and then he immediately dumps her for the person he actually cares about. Lucy doesn't matter to him based on his actions.
So now she's truly, fully alone. Queue nightmares.
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