#notlemonysnicket

“Well, when you have a vocabulary as extensive as mine and with so much generosity to give, it’s quite hard to put an end to such a list.” A snide smirk curls at the corner of his lips. Oh, how he did so enjoy having those before him quake with fear -- or so much so at least where he could sense it.

“Ah, there are no foolish questions. Only foolish people.” He interrupts, unable to help but do so. At the next question, despite his words, his smirk falters and he quirks his one brow curiously as if considering some sort of offer.

@notlemonysnicket continued from here

Lemony tried to laugh, but he found it rather difficult. Not unlike standing, at present. He was dressed nicely and smelled of a strange cocktail of liquor and cologne and fire. It had been a long day. He had ended it by drinking entirely too much. Was this his normal now? He didn’t care to ponder the answer.

  “No, no, I… I’m fine,” he told her, running his hand through his uncharacteristically messy hair. “You know, you look great tonight. You really do.” He smiled lopsidedly, his moss green eyes looking older than they were.

Kit sighed. “You’re not fine. You stink to high heaven, your hair could host a family of birds at the moment, and if I lit a match near you, well, let’s say you’d become rather draconic.” She threw one of his arms over her shoulder and stood against his side, arm curled around his back. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

“It is something we all learn, at V.F.D,” Lemony remarked, the hints of a sad, yet wry smile on his lips. “More than secret codes or complicated knots or the works of T.S. Eliot, we learn to watch things burn and die and die and burn.”

  His voice was thick, but there was no sign that tears might well up in those moss green eyes that shone back at Dewey under the amber lights of the lobby, over the dark red blood drying on Lemony’s shirt and hands and sleeves. “It’s ridiculous. Doesn’t it make you want to leave?”

“Mhm,” Dewey said, a little absentmindedly as he noticed the blood on L’s hands. He wanted to close his eyes and pretend he didn’t see it, because knowing that L had hurt and been hurt and that he, himself had enabled such things - it tore at his heart. 

 Lemony’s face reddened, and he smiled sheepishly, shuffled his foot. “I’m sorry, I had reason to believe that these men who passed us were looking for me and, well, I thought you would understand. Thank you, by the way.” He leaned down a little, compliantly.

Out of the corner of her eye, Violet noticed a well dressed man paying a bit too much attention to her. He looked familiar, quite a bit like someone she’d seen in an old photograph. He had a face she knew she’d seen her parents with, the lot of them laughing joyfully as if the world wasn’t a horrible place where people die in fires and leave their children behind. 

  Quivering from head to knees, Lemony lowered his head, shifting his gaze away from Dewey’s. He could barely breathe, yet he had to if he was to respond. He inhaled slowly, concentrating, and at last replied, barely above a whisper: “I don’t see how you can. I’m so… so, damaged.”

@notlemonysnicket continued from here.

 Lemony looked at his sister with horror in his wide eyes, his brow furrowed, his hands raised slightly towards her as if he was fighting the urge to grab her and hold her and never let her go again. He felt distantly grateful that he was between her and the door, because he was almst sure that she would just leave if he wasn’t, and who knew if he would ever see her again if she did that now?

 “Maybe not, but I do,” he told her, a little too desperate, a little too hoarse. “What if something happens to you? I couldn’t live with myself!”

“Something could happen to me anywhere.” Kit retorted. “When I got this tattoo I knew I wouldn’t have a quiet, domestic life. I knew the work wouldn’t be safe, but I also knew it would be good. That it would be worth doing.” Her voice became more earnest. “What else do you expect me to do? To stand idly by is to take part in the villainy one allows.”