Lucien Flashback: Punishment

Sometimes Lucien hates painting.

It doesn’t make sense. It’s the only consistent thing he’s ever had in his life. Before you, during you, after you…even when it felt like he’d lost it all, he still had a brush in his hand.

Staring at the canvas now only makes him regret almost everything , though. Your eyes stare back, the only clear thing he’s managed to paint all week. The rest of your face is blurry, out of focus, incomplete; he saw you just a few months ago, why can he not remember the details?

He could never forget your eyes, though. Even when he’s losing his mind, his memory fading, everything else lost to time or insanity, he’d still remember your eyes.

Forcing himself to set the brush down, he turns and takes a step away. This will never not haunt him; your gaze, the cold left in your absence, the heaviness in his heart. He fears he’ll carry it with him until he’s dead.

Some days he thinks that might be sooner rather than later.

He sits on the floor of Cameron’s aunt’s attic, which is acting as his little art studio until college finally rolls around. He crosses his legs and leans back, just staring up at your eyes painted in horrifically detailed acrylic. He’d made your gaze rather cold. Fitting, he supposes.

Lucien is no longer on the receiving end of your smiles, or your warm looks, or your wide eyed gaze when you were trying too hard not to laugh at something. He deserves your scorn. He deserves it so dearly that he forces it upon himself, even. Here he is, painting his worst nightmares with his own brush.

It’s not penance. It cannot be penance for there is no absolution of this sin.

No, this is karma. Karma that twists his gut and makes him want to lose his meager breakfast. He remembers you that day, the day you left his parent’s home with an emptiness in your eyes as you walked out. Years later, as he left through that very same door, he wondered if he felt a fraction of the pain you had.

It had been the second home you’d lost, after all. How cruel of them, how cruel of him. Turning on you when you, of all people, needed love the most.

The scar on his back burns fiercely, no cream enough to ease the sting of holy fire, but freedom was worth it. He should have left with you when you’d been banished from the Rivera household, but he hadn’t known then what he does now. If he’d known the Orlovs would take you in as they did…

He wonders if they would have allowed a second child to move in. Surely they would’ve. Viktor’s mother had been nothing but kind when Lucien used to visit. Her hugs were the only time he’d felt a mother’s touch and it hadn’t hurt.

Wondering was pointless, though. If he kept going down this path, he’d surely get lost. That’s what Cameron always says at least.

He stands, removing the painting from his easel. Your gaze damns him as he places it against the wall with the back facing out. Perhaps torturing himself would be more respectable, more in line with what he deserves, and he knows that. He just can’t stand it anymore tonight.