anonymous789: To answer your question from way back (about whether Bobby liked Luan or not) the answer is that he didn't. The Bobby seen was a pure illusion, and it was only Lori's paranoia and self-loathing that made her think he did. I would've answered sooner, but one person thought Bobby was dead/a ghost, and I wanted to toy with his expectations some more. I'm a little trickyboi.

Tristen: Now it's over.

"Done," she finally said.

It had taken her less time than she thought it would've. Less than twenty days. She couldn't help but be proud of herself. She knew that for most people it took months or years to finish a novel, but here she had done it in such a short time.

Then again, it would be easy to write a novel when the events were all taken from real life...

She would change the names of the characters, of course. And if she ever got her work published, she would publish it under a pseudonym, so that the events may never be traced back to her. But that didn't matter. None of that mattered. What mattered was that Lucy Loud had finished her first novel.

A rare smile skirted her face.

But the real test of her writing's worth would begin now. With a gulp that was both fearful and hopeful, Lucy gathered the pages that she had poured her soul onto, and placed them neatly in order. One chapter was shorter than the others, and Lucy swallowed when she remembered which one that was. She blinked back a tear, and murmured a soft prayer for her sister. For all of her sisters. Even Lori.

Yellowing pages in hand, Lucy placed them all together in the sleeve of a binder. She took that binder with her as she went up the stairs. She made little noise as she walked up the steps. Her ears pricked slightly, sensing something off about how the stairs didn't creak or thud underneath her. It made her feel like a ghost. When she thought about what she had written, she chuckled humorlessly at the thought of being a ghost.

She knocked on a door in the dark hall, and entered without waiting for an answer. She knew she wouldn't have received an answer, for Lily was sleeping inside, but she thought it would be polite. When the door opened, the faint light of the hallway spilled into the room and a ribbon of it landed right on Lily's eye. She groaned and stirred from her sleep, and when she opened her fluttering eyes, she saw it was Lucy standing in her doorway like a tall specter of death.

Lucy wasn't death, though. To Lily, she was the opposite. She was life and love itself.

She smiled softly when she saw Lucy, as she always did when, and Lucy's heart fluttered. The doom and gloom of her world could always be vanquished by the bright, shining smile of Lily Loud. "Hey Lucy," Lily said softly, rubbing her tired eyelid. "What's up?"

"I, uh, I finished," Lucy said, holding up her dark binder. Lily frowned and squinted, trying to tell what it was in the dark. Lucy sighed and closed the door behind them, and flicked one of the light switches to turn on the lights. Lily saw that it was a binder, and immediately understood what it was.

"Oh, you finished that book you were writing. Wow, that was fast," Lily giggled. "What's it about?"

Lucy looked down to Lily's neckline, and saw thin metal straps secured around it. Her eyes went a little lower, to her chest, and she saw the very item that made her think about writing her story. The sword totem with two serpentine dragons encircling it, and a cracked red gemstone encrusted in the blade. Lily sensed her lover's eyes on her chest, and thought to make a joke, but she recognized the somber look on Lucy's already somber face, and she reached up to touch her necklace. The full significance of it never truly clicked with Lily, but she still treasured it like a fiancee treasures her wedding ring.

"It's about that necklace," Lucy said finally, her voice slow and steady. "And other things."

"What other things?"

"Us. Like us. And everything that happened to make us us."

Lily shook her head. "Lucy… I know you want to write for a dark and mature audience, but this… don't you think it's a bit too much? These are… these are people's lives you're fictionalizing. Family members. Our lives."

"I know that. But still..."

Lily held up a hand, cutting the author off. "Did you… did you treat them with dignity?" she asked.

Lucy knew who she was talking about. Lily just didn't want to say their names.

"I tried," she admitted truthfully.

Lily sighed, and nodded a solemn nod. She then shook her head, as if she were arguing with herself. Her blonde hair was longer now, so strands and curls of it bounced as she moved her head. "You know what," Lily said with a smile, "I'm not gonna make this an interrogation. Congratulations, Lucy. I knew you could do it. And I'm sure it's a good book."

Lucy's cheeks flushed red, and she tried to hide her blush behind the binder. Even after months, she couldn't help but be as awkward as a middle school girl approaching her crush at their locker. Lily loved that about her. As well as everything else.

"Thanks. So, uh… sigh. If it's not too much to ask, Lily..."

"Do you want me to read it?"

Lucy nodded. "Yes please."

Lily got up from her bed slowly, drawing it out for all it was worth. The blanket was throw off her supple body, and Lucy saw how little she was wearing. A plain white shirt that was a few sizes too large for her, and on the bottom she wore nothing but a pair of pure white cotton panties. Lucy could see the red flush crawling up her legs, and Lucy wet her lips, imagining herself kissing her there.

The younger girl approached Lucy and put her hands gently on top of Lucy's fingers, which clutched the binder so tightly that her knuckles were whitening. She rubbed the goth's hands smoothly, drawing a hushed moan from her painted lips. Lily smiled softly, her cheeks glowing to match the color of sunset. "I'd be honored to," said Lily, looking up into Lucy's eyes. She smiled when she actually met them. The black bangs that had once hid them were gone - now Lucy's headband kept them from hiding the windows to her soul. She didn't want to hid them from Lily, or anyone else. Her eyelashes were long, and they fluttered. Lily couldn't stop herself from rising up and kissing Lucy on her eye. "I love you. Even if you write books that make me miserable."

Lily kept to her word. She was busy for some time with homework and spending time with friends, but she kept her word. It took her less than a week to read. If you counted only the days where she read it, it took her three days. If you counted the days where she didn't even want to touch the thing, it took her five days to finish it. But by the sixth day, a lazy Saturday, she had come to Lucy on the living room sofa and given her the binder back. Lucy's heart beat rapidly as she asked her, "What did you think?" and waited for her response with baited breath.

"I thought the exact same things I thought when I lived through... all that. When I read about Lori, I felt scared. When I read about Luan, I felt so bad for her. When I read about Lynn, I cringed. And when I read about you..."

Lucy leaned in, and Lily took that as an opportunity to smirk, grab her older sister's face, and bring her down for a passionate kiss. They held on for a moment, tasting each other's love, before they broke apart, a thin and shimmering line of spit on both their tongues. Lucy felt Lily's breaths, and how hot and ragged they were.

"… I remembered why I loved you so much."

Lily rubbed herself against Lucy, her flat chest brushing against Lucy's milky boobs, and brought her face down to hers again as if she were planning to kiss her. She didn't though. She spoke to Lucy, and let the cool air wash over the older girl's blushing face.

"I remembered how you seemed like such a mystery to me. You were so exotic and so distant. I don't remember how often we even talked. Maybe we didn't," said Lily, a sad incline in her voice. Then her smoldering love returned to her. "But then I took that first brave step, and I found there was so much to you. You were emotional, kind, smart, brave..."

"I don't think I'm brave."

Lily shook her head, and kissed the side of Lucy's mouth comfortingly. "You were brave. You are brave. Against everyone and everything else, you're one of the strongest. Do you think that someone like me, Lily Loud, would fall so deeply in love with a coward?"

"No. That's Lynn's job," Lucy opined.

Lily let out a harsh laugh. "And here I thought you made up with her and Lincoln."

"I did. But the true test of friendship is insulting them. Only the closest friends insult each other, because they know that they'll stay friends after that."

They both laughed in their murmurs, and Lily kissed her again. "I love you, Lucy. Thank you for this."

"For what?"

"For writing a book that kept me up at night, I really needed the scares to help me study," Lily joked, before dismissing it with a wave. "But seriously, thank you for reminding me about us. I think what makes us special is just how much we had to fight for we have now. It's… it's strange honestly. Two sisters with so little in common… but then here we are."

She reached to her necklace and wrapped her soft fingers around it.

"You're worth fighting for, Lucy," she told her, "and you're worth dying for."

They hugged, holding each other tightly, as the painful memories washed over them. It was almost cathartic. It hurt, what happened to them, and it would always hurt. It would always hurt that they lost some of their closest friends and sisters. It would always hurt that their eldest sister died hating them. It would always hurt knowing that it wasn't really her, but a bout of insanity that destroyed their family. It would always hurt knowing that while they all died, Bobby Santiago lived with the smug satisfaction that he would one day be freed from his cell and back on the streets.

But they had each other to fight the darkness with. And they held each other close.

Well, each other, and two other people who shouldn't have been together either.

"You know you two could do that in your room, right? And then you can do it naked."

The jovial voice of Lynn cut their moment, and they both looked at her with annoyance. Lincoln was by her side, and he just shrugged with a little smile, a little amused by his girlfriend's antics. Lynn's eyes lit up when she saw the dark colored binder in Lucy's hands, and she quickly pointed at it and asked, "What's that?"

"N-Nothing. It's nothing," said Lucy, trying to hide it.

Lynn's smile just grew wider. "Oh, don't tell me… is it some love poetry?"

"Lynn!" Lily whined. Her face was softly red like ember before, but now it went fully supernova out of embarrassment.

"Damn, I can only imagine how many times Lucy must've rhymed 'sigh' with something. Like, I don't know, 'When I look at you, I sigh. When I see my soda spill, I cry.'"

Lucy pounced on the jock like a black panther, and Lily hopped in right after. As the brawl turned into a raging dust cloud, Lincoln looked at the audience and shrugged. "In a big family like this, you just gotta roll with stuff like this," he said, before letting out a high-pitched war cry and jumping in to fight his older and younger sisters.

They had a lot of fun.

Sometimes you just need fun at the end of some dark times.

The book got published a few years later, after many rejections. The publisher who accepted it demanded a few changes. Well, a lot of changes. The ages had to go up, the incestuous sex scenes were completely eliminated, more words were demanded, and a few other minor details that made the story barely recognizable. Lucy was, understandably, annoyed as she read her hardcover copy, so she went back to her original manuscript and began proofreading it for minor spelling errors and improper grammar on her own. She was already planning for it to get accidentally leaked to the web. Accidentally, of course.

And one night, when she got done finishing up with the first sexual encounter between her and Lily, she retired to her room, where she found a present waiting for her on her bed.

It was Lily, grinning with playful mischief, wrapping up in nothing but a red ribbon. Her silky skin was glistening in the soft light, her golden hair shampooed and cleaned, and Lucy could just almost make out the outline of her sex under a strip of red felt.

"Congrats on getting published," Lily purred. "Aren't you going to open your… present~?"

Lucy smirked, and eagerly went to her sister.

Someone way earlier on said that this story was just an edgier version of my old fic Bound By Secrets. And in a sense, it was. It was a Loudcest story featuring Lincoln, Lynn, Lucy and a villainous Lori, with a frame story to bookend it. I do feel, however, like I put a new spin on the tropes I used before, which made it a bit darker and more thrilling to write than that one. I've actually had at least two people tell me they couldn't finish this story after the Leni chapter, and while I get that, I still think it's not that bad. Maybe it's because it was Leni specifically...

There is one thing that this story made me realize as well: I don't usually depict Lori in a good light. Don't get me wrong, I've written her positively before ("Anything For A Friend"), and I've written the other siblings in a similar light as here ("The Sixth Daughter"), but I'd hate to make her the bad guy over and over and over again. So as soon as I finished this story a couple of months ago, I got to work on a Lincori story. It's fluffy, fun, and really hot weary emoji. I'll upload the first chapter after the weekend, so check it out if you're in the neighborhood.

Well, I hope you enjoyed. Hopefully I'll do another Lilcy story sometime soon. Maybe with less murder next time...