Seventh fic for a Pride Month prompt challenge from tumblr. Prompt: underground.

So I took the prompt and decided to apply it to the London Underground. Obviously it's normally the Morrigan's territory but I wanted to write a little introspective thing about Laura and Luci.

Sometimes, on hot slow days when the Tube is full of sweat and bodies, I think I see her again. When I descend the escalators at Tottenham Court Road, down into the underground furnace of the trains and the bustling commuters and tourists, I can hear her laugh ripple through the air, her gait on the dirty tiled floor, the click of her fingers in time with the busking.

I pass posters, seeing Baal and the Morrigan and Amaterasu staring back at me, and I think about how I used to see her face blown up many times its actual size at the stations, gaze intense even under the London dust. She's not there any more. Instead she appears to me in every tall, short-haired woman I pass, and I've had to stop doing double-takes now because it's never her. Obviously. I tell myself to get a fucking grip. She was never interested in me to begin with anyway – she was in the Pantheon for... well, gods' sakes. And anyway, she's dead. So whatever.

'Whatever' doesn't stop me feeling an ache though.

I can't stop thinking about her. I realise it when I wake up in the night, dreams full of white hair and white clothes and a long-gone, lovely voice. My heart hammers in my chest like a caged bird and I shudder. In my dreams, flames lick at my heels and I stretch upwards, reaching for... something. But something else drags me down, pulls me back and then I'm falling down, down down again.

I don't know what to do.

So I throw myself into trying to find out what's happening, what happened, why Luci died and who killed her. I chase leads, I ask questions. I piss people off. Not just gods. I know I'm pissing them off and that it won't help, but part of me wants to piss them off. They should be pissed off – what if whoever framed Luci starts targetting the rest of them? Aren't they worried?

I can't keep worrying about them, not if I want to keep my sanity.

On the Tube, I resign myself to turning around and seeing Luci's face for an instant before it's gone again, hearing the timbre of her singing and smelling the slow drag of a cigarette. It all hurts. I have to get used to it though. She's not coming back. Not for another ninety years.