" i walked into the ocean. not to drown but to be held by something reluctant to let go. and when i looked down, I shattered and reformed so many times, you know, i couldn’t catch a clear look at myself. "
content warnings: claustrophobia, emotional trauma, self-harm (not explicit), blood, mentions of death & murder, dissociative episode
word count: ~2.5k | poem from graphic | graphic template
The cruel irony of being sent home for the holidays is that it is no vacation for Lucia or Dante. Leaving the sealed capsule of Blue Ivy for the cool, cutting winter of Italy feels like a reprieve at first, a change of scenery, but it is only a shallow one. Lucia not only has to deal with all of her family, exuberant and relentless in their celebrations, but also the proximity of Dante. She feels his eyes on her whenever she speaks, whenever she laughs too loudly or stays too quiet, as if he is measuring her, testing her, waiting for her to slip and spill something she shouldn’t.
For one night, at least, the house is quiet. There are no relatives packed shoulder to shoulder, no clinking glasses or overflowing tables. The dining room is bare, stripped of its usual excess. The only sound is the fire cracking in the family room, sharp and sudden in the silence. From her father’s study come low murmurs; his and Dante’s voices are kept deliberately quiet.
Dante is effortless at home. He drapes an arm around Lea’s shoulders like the weight of everything does not touch him. It makes Lucia withdraw into herself, wondering what she is missing. She has spent the past few nights celebrating by drinking excessively and avoiding eye contact with most of the family. She definitely does not try to seek out any of the Infascellis, not with the revealed information so fresh in his mind.
He enjoys this, and his amusement is clear to her. Her stomach churns, sharp with nausea. Lucia turns to move down the hall, away from the voices, away from the fire. The house grows too quiet as her thoughts swell, pressing in until they drown out everything else. Her father’s voice fades. Her brother’s laughter dissolves.
She does not remember choosing to enter the bathroom. She only knows she is there, the door closing behind her with a soft, final click. The half-bathroom is small, airless. The walls feel closer than they should. Some darker instinct insists she belongs here—that she should stay. Let the tightness settle into her chest. Let her breath shorten. Let the pain surface, the one she keeps buried.
Lucia recalls how she was so sure that she wouldn’t come back home, not after the dinner party and Renata’s corpse sitting in front of them all. She lives each week on borrowed time, as if someone will emerge from the shadows and end it cleanly, violently, the way Vincent and Ryosuke's lives ended. Her hands rise without conscious thought, fingers pressing lightly against the sides of her throat.
Briefly, she thinks of the calming techniques a doctor told her once to combat her claustrophobia—deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth, focusing on tangible things and sounds. But the bathroom holds nothing except the uneven sound of her breathing and the mirror that shows a reflection of a girl she no longer knows. All she can focus on are the memories clouding her mind. Lucia has never been in control of herself.
She forces herself to look.
It is always the same.
The reflection stares back, knowing, almost as if it were inviting. It welcomes her. Lucia stumbles back, heart lurching. She should leave, run out the door, but her feet refuse to move. She looks again, slower this time, searching for something familiar.
The thing in the mirror is wrong—sharp jaw, eyes too wide, too alert. Its hair hangs long and tangled, damp against its neck. She lifts a hand, expecting wet strands, but her fingers slide over dry hair instead. The disconnect makes her dizzy. She opens the cabinet beneath the sink and finds the ornate silver scissors waiting there, gleaming.
Lucia straightens, movements distant, mechanical. She lifts a lock of hair and brings the blades together. Snip. The sound echoes in her ears, sharp and immediate. She stills, breath caught, pulse roaring in her ears. Then she lifts another section. Snip. And another. Snip. Time fractures. She cuts until sensation returns — until she feels present, anchored. Until she feels in control. Lucia will be the one in control, not her parents, not the Society, and not Dante.
His name stops her cold, and she chokes on a stolen breath at what she has become because of him. The reflection stares back, altered now, and it resembles him so well. Escape feels impossible. Her plan to win the Trials is a fragile lie. How can she ever unmake herself from the one person who has stood beside her from birth, whether she wants him there or not?
The scissors clatter to the ground. The sting in her hand does not register until pieces of glass begin to fall from the mirror. Pain blooms a heartbeat later. The reflection is jagged and broken, staring back at her in horror at what she has done.
Lucia gasps. Water roars in her ears, blood rushing just as loudly now. Her senses return all at once, overwhelming. Her hands clamp onto the sink, knuckles splitting, nails whitening from the force. She shoves her hands beneath the tap, watching the streaks of blood wash away, curling down the drain with small, shining shards of glass. A ragged breath tears from her lungs as she struggles to steady herself.
She looks up. Enveloped by the broken glass of the shattered mirror, the face staring back is still hers: blotchy, red, streaked with tears, with freckles barely visible beneath smeared makeup. The pale green of her eyes is red-rimmed and looks brighter than usual.
Her hair is ruined. Fresh tears spill as she takes in the choppy, uneven locks brushing awkwardly along her neck. When was the last time she looked at herself like this? When was the last time she did not cover her mirrors, did not turn away, and avoid her own reflection? Why does she keep destroying herself, again and again?
The knock at the door is too familiar. Her heart spikes instantly. For a moment, time folds in on itself. He is back. He is coming for her again. The dark, mahogany walls seem to inch closer.
“Lucia?” A voice cuts through the door, delicate but still commanding. Relief hits hard as she realizes it is her mother. “Did I just heard something break in there? What was that?
Reality reasserts itself. She is home, in the winter cold, temporarily spared from the trials. Temporarily. She turns back to the mirror. It reflects a broken girl, a ruined haircut, and her unaware mother waiting on the other side.
"I'll be out shortly," she calls automatically, but her voice is shaking and comes out all wrong. Hair coats the sink and tile floor, dark brown against white porcelain. Her hands tremble as she tries to gather it when another knock comes.
“Are you okay?” Veronica asks, worried, threading her voice. The question and care coming from her mother is something so strange to her that a terse laugh escapes Lucia before she can stop it. “Lucia Cassandra, open the door. What are you doing?"
Lucia's hands tremble, but there is no other answer here. If she does not unlock the door, she may never leave. Slowly, she opens the door, despite every instinct screaming not to. She does not want Dante to hear her. She does not want him to see her fall apart. So let it be her mother, the one who never saw her potential. Let this be the final nail in her coffin.
“— hear me? Lucia?” Her mother fills her vision, and suddenly, they are no longer in the bathroom. Instead, they are hidden away in one of the guest suites. The bed behind them is pristine, green sheets tucked tight, as if these halls and rooms were not filled with her cousins or aunts and uncles.
Veronica Arcari looks at her daughter with fear. The sight is disorienting. Her mother is not afraid of anything—certainly not her.
“I... I hurt my hand," Lucia says lamely, as if that will explain everything.
Lucia sees the way that relief floods back into her mother’s eyes at the sound of Lucia’s scratchy voice. Her mother takes her in her arms, a sudden embrace. And Lucia is left reeling with the revelation that she cannot remember the last time her mother hugged her. The warmth feels foreign. Before she can even try to return the embrace, Veronica moves her back to arm's length and starts to examine her hand, frowning. “It's not that bad. I'll get the emergency kit. Sit down.”
Lucia obeys, sitting near the Venetian window overlooking the garden. She listens to her mother move through the room towards the guest bathroom, clinging to the sounds as an anchor. Tears well despite her efforts, and she despises how fragile she must look.
Veronica returns and begins to clean the wound in silence, removing glass with careful precision and treating the wound. Soon, her hand is wrapped in a light bandage.
“Oh, mia cara, what have you done?” Veronica lifts Lucia’s chin as she looks back at her daughter and sees the tears that cloud her vision. Veronica gently wipes her tears away. Then, she hesitates. Lucia braces for criticism.
“I'll sort this mess out,” Veronica says instead.
Shame stirs in Lucia’s chest. She expected anger or judgment. That is what she knows best.
Her relationship with her mother has always been strained. Lucia disrupts their lives out of spite, out of exhaustion, out of years spent being overlooked and compared to Dante. She sniffles, wishing she could vanish.
Her mother has taken some shears and begins to trim her hair. The sound of the scissors is softer now, almost pacifying. Lucia cannot remember the last time somebody took care of her like this. Finally, Veronica brushes hair from Lucia’s shoulders as she sets the scissors down on the table next to her. "I need to know why you did this to yourself, why are you so quiet?"
“I can pay you for the mirror!" Lucia blurts out, as if it would fix everything. The last thing she wanted was for them to have yet another thing to hold over her head.
"Lucia, stop being ridiculous. I do not care about the mirror right now." Veronica sighs, and Lucia can picture the way her eyes close in exasperation, as they often do around her. She moves to sit in the chair across from her and tilts Lucia’s chin up with her thumb and forefinger. “I want to know what happened to my daughter. What drove her to destroy her beautiful hair or to hurt herself? That's not like you."
Lucia turns her head away, her mother’s hand falling back down to the table between them. Her hand turns, palm up, an offering. Lucia swallows thickly and focuses on the thrumming pain in her knuckles to ground herself. She ignores her mother’s outstretched hand. “I'll be fine." Maybe, she thinks grimly. “Please don't act like you suddenly care! I can take care of myself."
Veronica doesn’t respond at first, and Lucia knows she is assessing her answer and the best angle to attack. As if she were the lion and Lucia the gazelle. If Veronica does not strike at the exact right time, she will flee. Hackles rising, her hands grip the table, and she prepares to escape, the feeling of being cornered disarming.
"It is apparent you cannot." Her tone is biting and condescending as she nods towards her injured hand. "You shouldn't have taken that job so far away from us. Perhaps working for us or with Dante would help you regain your composure." Veronica expresses her opinions as if they were facts. Lucia, on the other hand, maintains an unwavering glare at her. Her mother will believe whatever she wants to. She continues to maintain that Lucia did not earn a life outside of law, and she is convinced that Dante will be the saving grace for this family.
"You're not going to tell me, are you?" She doesn’t say anything else until Lucia minutely shakes her head in response.
“You've been so… distant these past few years. I barely recognize you, you don’t answer my calls, and then you're away from Italia for months and months, and then you come home, and you avoid every conversation when you're usually the life of the party. And now this…” she gestures at her appearance, unkempt and miserable.
She stands then, moving across the room towards the vanity that sits at the south wall. Lucia’s heart drops as she sees her mother pick up a silver hand mirror. Veronica returns to her side and holds it out in front of her, not giving her the choice to look away.
Lucia stares at herself and does not turn away, not even when her mother is directly behind her in the reflection. Veronica’s resolve is so sure, so strong. She has never been made to doubt herself; she’s always succeeded. Lucia cannot say the same for herself.
Cautiously, she lifts her hand and feels the short, once blunt and now feathery, ends of her hair. Her dark hair now stops below her jaw, framing her face beautifully. No longer are the pieces torn; they have been made new.
“Whatever is torturing you, my dear, it won't define who you are. Do you understand me? And maybe one day I'll finally understand why. Clean yourself up and go to bed. We'll talk more in the morning.”
Lucia drifts back to her room as though she were a lost ghost, moving silently through the haunted walls of her home. She lies in her bed, tossing and turning, until sleep welcomes her. Then, she dreams. She dreams of the end of the trial and of when she may finally be free of this torment.
She feels the Gamemaster’s cold gaze piercing through her. She sees Clementine’s head thrown back in joyous laughter, the warmest source of comfort she has at Blue Ivy.
She watches in horror as Cassiel stands over Renata’s corpse, and her arms begin to twist and turn at uncomfortable and odd angles. Then, Lucia’s whisked away. It’s Lachlan now, who holds her in his arms as they sleep in his studio, locked away from the outside. He is just as unnerved as her.
And then there is Archer, the thorn in her side she can never quite be rid of. Lucia doesn't know if she ever wants to be. She sees the vicious grin on Etienne’s face as he is revealed to be yet another murdered amongst them. Throughout it all, Dante stands there, just in the background. A constant reminder of what has been done and cannot be resolved.
She shifts uncomfortably as he approaches her, a wicked gleam in familiar green eyes and an ornate pair of silver scissors in his hand, and she startles awake. Her heart’s racing, but she’s alone, her door is locked, and the mirror at her vanity has long since been shrouded with an ornate, decorative throw.
the coming storm - this card, shown in reverse, reveals a lack of direction, restless energy, and holding back. you are not honest with those around you, and most importantly, yourself.
" secrecy flows through you, a different kind of blood ... you can think of nothing else. once you have it, you want more. what power it gives you! power of knowing without being known, power of the stone door, power of the iron veil, power of the crushed fingers, power of the drowned bones crying out from the bottom of the well. "
Hauntings of their past flash across her mind as he leads her through the steps of their dance. He would never dance with her unless others were watching. It was all about pretenses and shaping the way others saw them. It's a charade they've spent their whole lives preparing for. — @arcaris
dante + lucia having such a bad time at the ball 🥰
you were meant to stand out. there’s no hiding here, your mask instead invites the stares of others. you are bright, painted red, and a target. though you can appreciate the beauty of the mask and it’s intricate details, you can’t help but ruminate over what they intended by giving you such a piece.
you do not know who looks back at you in the mirror. someone who has long lost her sense of self and now drifts aimlessly in a foreign castle, dressed to the nines. you wield your beauty as a weapon, sharp and unforgiving. you need it now more than ever. further musings.
Topaz Winters, from Portrait of My Body as a Crime I'm Still Committing; “High Specific Heat”
[Text ID: “When you smiled, the morning blushed pink / & gold. Violent & tender. Horrifying & warm. / My ache left me behind. I thought: okay. / I could get used to this. / & I did. I got used to you. You became a habit / & god knows I can never get rid of habits. / You, who told me I was worthy. / You, full of ink that tasted like wine—you / translucent & dreaming of flight.”]
