#um surprise? scene 3 is kinda more a bonus than actual part of the fic but eh

[factorialsotherfandoms]

Lucie is cold, and bleeding, and the monster is gone but there is nothing she can do. Adrenaline keeps her away but, as soon as it crashes, she knows she will succumb.

To the cold, to the blood loss, to the failure.

She is dying alone, and it is meaningless. Carol will throw Emi to the monster again, Benito will not care, Diego and Luis and Jeffery are too far away to save her… The monster… Oh, god, the monster - it is going to take them, too. She will die alone and for nothing and soon Diego and Emi and all of them will join her too.

"Lucie?"

She thinks, on the breeze, she might hear someone call her name. It is a dying hallucination - it must be.

"Lucie!"

Maybe whatever god exists has granted her mercy, letting her hallucinate Diego one last time. Even if Diego is crying… But of course he is, because he and everyone else is about to die.

"Meu Deus, Lucie…" she can almost smell him. "Wait. Jeffrey! Jeffrey, help, she's still alive!"

Not for long, though; she knows it will not be long. The adrenaline keeping her heart going is leaking out of her wounds and into the snow. The pain makes her delirious, makes her see things she does not.

Lets her feel a warm hand on her cheek and harsh ones on her chest, something tight against her leg. She is in pain, she is in agony, and her mind has tricked her into not being alone.

"Lucie, can you hear us? Lucie!"

But he's only a hallucination, and Lucie does not want to stay.

It hurts, it hurts, it hurts so much… She's already failed, why won't it just let the pain end? Why won't it leave her be?

/The ice/ says a voice that sounds suspiciously like Diego. /People bleed slower in the cold./

Lucie doesn't think she wants to bleed slower - she wants to bleed fast, so she can die, so she can finally put an end to the pain.

For a moment she thinks she gets it, but then there is another sharp pain that shakes her core. Reality comes in flashes, barely understood; a blue coat, lights, yelling- She tries to call to the voices, to ask for Emi. Someone terrified slams a hand over her mouth, and she forgets to breathe.

A crackling radio, hysteria, something heavy pressed against her. She doesn't understand, she hurts and she hurts and its no longer cold but why hasn't she died, why won't the world just let her die and for a while the world fades out, but then there's Emi screaming her name and Diego stroking hair from her face and Benito throwing a fit over the amount of blood on her coat as he pulls out a needle and thread, and Lucie almost wishes it was real.

It isn't real, it isn't, the monster took her - she's a dead woman… not walking, but lying.

There's arguing all around her. There's screaming and yelling and she grabs the nearest trouser leg to try get attention.

It's Diego - ways Diego - who answers.

"Lucie?" He drops to his knees beside her, voice caught in a sob. "Lucie, Lucie, you're okay, we've got you, you're okay, what do you need?"

The words blur and she doesn't quite understand, especially when they're not in her own French.

Its hard, its impossible, but she must - she shakily presses a finger to her lips and pretends she cannot taste the blood.

It takes Diego a moment, before he turns and does his best to yell "I'll do it just be quiet!"

Lucie doesn't want Diego to leave, but he does, and she thinks, maybe, that dying alone might be kinder than hallucinations who abandon her.

They don't, however; Jeffrey takes the radio and Luis watches Mikael, and Emi is still clinging to her hand. Benito's hand is also taken by the girl, and his free one pokes bandages around her chest.

Lucie screams, and the world is black, and she thinks - finally!

But then reality crashes back, and she's being carried in arms she doesn't understand, and the carry must be real for she screams as footsteps shake her, but perhaps it is the monster back again, here again, unsatisfied with his larder and so moving her instead.

The jolting, the pain, being passed to someone - more yelling. So much more yelling, and agony as things are pressed to her wounds and her face and perhaps the monster means to smother her, but at least it means it is not touching the others.

The others, the others, who should not be here - who need to run and run and run and never look back because they are being chased and chased and don't they know they're all dead, all dead, all so so dead, but they //need. To. Run.//

A prick on her arm, and another scream - even if she is a failure, maybe she can bait the monster away and -

And Diego is there, and Emi, and Luis, and Jeffrey, and Benito… No Carol, no Mikael, and Lucie isn't sure that she cares.

There's more yelling and more loud noises, and the haze that is Lucie understands none of it, and the longer it goes on the more the haze grows.

Lucie doesn't remember the rest of it, just Diego and Emi sobbing, and that, perhaps, is how it always should have ended anyway.

---

Lucie wakes in a bed, with beeping all around. Diego is right there, at her side, more bandage than man but grasping her hand none the less. It is bright, too bright, but the world is only what it is.

Diego seems asleep, clutching her hand. Looking… Jeffrey lies in the next bed, Luis passed out on the floor between them.

And Lucie…

Lucie is covered in wires, and pain, and a blur, but she knows where she must be. She's… not dead? And Diego is hurt, but right here! They're safe, they're safe, they're safe, but where's Emi?

The panic comes back as soon as the thought occurs, dulled by the painkillers but still impossible to ignore. She wants to wreathe, to run, to find the girl and they need to get away before it comes back and-!

The beeping gets louder.

A doctor - not Bonito, someone she has never seen before - appears. He asks her things and she thinks she answers, he adjusts wires and makes notes and she doesn't understand. Diego is woken up - he looks exhausted - and clings to her hands, making her promises she doesn't think he can keep, as she panics.

When the doctor leaves, he pulls her into a hug, and sobs into her hair.

"Where's little brat?" she asks, shaking in his hold. "Where are we? What- I was dead, what happened?"

Diego holds her tighter, tucking her close and it isn't /safe/ but its /safer/.

"Benito took her to get food," he says. "It's okay, you're okay, we found you - Jeffrey and I got the bleeding under control, and Luis carried you back. Its… Its bad, but its okay! You're going to be okay."

With a shaking hand she touches one of the bandages on Diego's face.

"There were more infected," he takes her hand from his face, and gently holds it in his own. "It's okay, we got away. Well… Mikael and Carol didn't, but…"

"Fuck them," she whispers. "Fuck them both, fuck all of them." "Yeah," Diego agrees. "Even Jeffrey agreed to shoot them by the end."

Lucie feels light, feels giddy. The laugh bubbles forth, first a giggle, then a shriek, as stress pours from her soul into the void. "I was dying," she laughs. "I- I- I was dying, and Carol was going to kill Emi, and- and-"

The laughter gives way to sobs, and a door slams open. In marches the little brat herself, eyes wide and shaken as she clutches Benito with one hand, and a milkshake in the other. Benito seems much more relaxed, but for the glasses that hide his eyes - there's a large bag of MacDonalds over his elbow, and he tosses it at Diego.

"Lucie!" he calls. "See, Diego, I told you she'd live."

Diego flips him off, and leans over to wake Luis up.

Lucie is quickly distracted by Emi throwing herself on the bed, the girl scrambling desperately until she's pressed against Lucie and gripping her tight. Lucie surpressed the yells, the pain it causes, and hugs her back.

"You okay, little brat?" Lucie tries to soften her voice. "Did the dumb dumb doctor look after you?"

"Don't you dare do that again!" Emi screeches. "You're not- Dad's- you're not allowed to do that again!"

"I wasn't going to let you die," Lucie holds her. "We look after you, ok?" "No!" Emi sobs. "No, not okay!"

"Eh, chill out, she woke up so she's fine," despite his dismissive words, Benito is soft as he pets the top of Emi's head. "Well she's missing a leg, and her spine is fucked so she's probably losing the other one too, but its not like she can't live without legs. Will probably be faster on wheels than trying to run. So she's fine."

"Benito!"

Lucie isn't sure which of Diego or Luis - or Jeffrey, newly awake but looking very out of it - the screech came from. She doesn't really care, the reality not crashing in yet. All she can do is laugh at the flippant tone Benito says it in, like telling someone their cat got hit by a truck - or, no, a normal person wouldn't sound like that then either, so like someone telling you there's a bug in your hair. It's not right, it's not how anyone should say it, but in the short time she's known him it is so /very/ Benito.

Some idiot doctor she barely knows but who has survived hell with her just flippantly has told her she'll never walk again, and all she can do is laugh and think, perhaps, not walking is a small price for being alive with her Emi and her boys.

Because they are /hers/ now, if the universe wants them from her they can tear them from her cold, undying hands.

It will hit her later, the mess of her situation, in the dark and the alone, but for now she laughs in defiance of a world that tried to kill her. She grasps it with her teeth, just like teeth bit into her, and may not be a hero, but she won't let it win.

---

It will be many, many months before Lucie will be okay, but she will. The flat she and Diego share will need to be sold, but Luis' Abuelita will open up her home to all six of them strays. Lucie will get her own room on the ground floor, Emi on the first, and the boys all share the basement. Most nights, however, everyone will end up in Lucie's room - and nobody will mind.

Diego will help her up, and Abuelita will make them all breakfast, and Lucie will wheel herself out to the garden. She will drink wine and laugh and watch her Emi and her boys. Jeffery will be helping with the flowerbeds, while Benito heckles him instead of reviewing his textbooks. Luis and Diego will drag Emi into a game of catch, and Lucie will cheer for her girl.

At least, until a throw will be missed; Lucie will catch it and return it, and will join them - one hand to the controls for her wheelchair, the other to catch the ball.

There will be nightmares and horror and days she can feel the glove on her wrist or pain in a leg no longer there or the break in her spine will be agony, but those are not the only days for her future.

There will also be family, and love, playing ball in the garden and teaching Emi French and late nights on the patio where she falls asleep beneath the stars and in the arms of her boys. Benito will train to be licensed in Mexico, Jeffrey will get a job at a new pizza place closer to their new home. Diego will research and use the hush money to find parts of the world she can still explore, and they will go together - and never out of signal range.

Luis will see his grandmother again, and Emi will have a new home. They all will have a home, in each other, in blood.

Lucie may not remember being saved, but she remembers how it felt to die afraid and cold and alone and believing you had failed everything in your life forwards.

Lucie will look at her future, then, and for the first time in many years see hope.

#opq #opq fanfic #fix fic #um surprise? scene 3 is kinda more a bonus than actual part of the fic but eh #opq lucie #opq diego #opq emi #opq benito #the others are also here but less important #lucie lives au! #mikael and carol still die but nobody is especially upset about it #tldr of the other PoV: most of the show remains the same but Diego Luis and Jeffrey find Lucie on their way back #manage to stabalise her and leave her in the radio tower #mikael manages not to kill her while she's extremely out of it #when it comes to running to the helicopter Luis carries her #and then we're skipping the next facility and assuming pancea did actually have a cure for the infection itself just held elsewhere #and fluffing things a bit to get everyone staying in Luis' grandma's house