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“Line in the Sand”, page 19

🕑 Added 2025-09-22 17:00:10 +0000 UTC

Comments

Peligrin

Yeah, Lucy has never even told Augustus that she has a problem with Mike being outside and I’m honestly starting to doubt it’s even as big of a deal as Augustus has made it. It just happens to be something he feels like he can influence and probably feels powerless to help Lucy otherwise. Manipulating and hurting other people is probably how he feels most useful

SomeColourMage

think I've realised what's really getting me about Augustus' whole premise going back to Seeing Stars, which is when Mike first starts going outside, and Lucy is pretty clearly declining. Augustus catches on to Lucy's problems before Mike even enters into it. the "dreams don't mean anything" conversation was already ongoing, and while Aug pushes harder after Mike shows up, the fact that Lucy is having issues and lying about it is already established. and it's a conversation he's having, about something he suspects is happening, so he should already know this! even if Mike is causing a problem, he's attacking a single symptom and acting like it's a cure. a shitty one at that, considering the potential of collateral damage by picking a fight with the pretty clear goal of having a stranger to the whole problem around to make Mike look bad. he doesn't know whether or not James is a gossip (and considering how David learned about Paisy, well...) this of course doesn't mean Mike is in the right either, but he's in the wrong for completely unrelated reasons. hinging his entire social life around James isn't healthy and he's been given constant opportunity to reach out to others, he just refuses. the fact that he's getting a bit jealous over Paisy doesn't even start to form an excuse, because the track team are mostly removed from all of his other problems. like dude, just talk to someone