Disclaimer going forward: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
A Poet in Distress
*All recognizable dialogue is from Fool for Love*
Here it is. The fragile moment of truth. With herculean courage, William Pratt meets Cecily Adams' expectant gaze. Odd, how he'd never before noticed the precise shape of her eyes. He'd not had the opportunity to see her so closely before.
Cecily shifts minutely and William, fearing she would take leave of his presence, utters his answer.
"I meant every syllable."
The world almost seems to shimmer with the same anticipation clogging William's throat. His heart thunders until he is left nearly breathless as he waits for her response.
Cecily's lips pull back from her teeth and she wrinkles her nose. "Oh, God…" She turns away from him.
Was that disappointment or excitement? William's heart flutters at the sight of Cecily's dainty hands twisting together. Could it be her nerves were equally as wrought? Or perhaps she was embarrassed by the public reading of William's feelings for her. Such a thing ought to have been private. William rushes round to face her.
"Please…I know this is sudden. And-and if they're no good, they're only words. But the feeling behind them…I love you, Cecily." William blurts the extent of his feelings in one fell rush. Oh, God! No taking the words back now.
Cecily face is frozen. "Please stop."
Though William knows he's revealed his hand further than is polite, he can't let the conversation end here.
"I know I'm a bad poet, but I'm a good man. All I ask is that you try to see me…"
Cecily finally addresses him directly. "I do see you."
William's breath catches. She sees him! All he's ever wanted was for someone to see-
"That's the problem." Cecily somehow seems to talk down her nose at William. "You're nothing to me, William. You're beneath me."
Cecily's disparaging words burn liquid hot through William's blood. His cheeks heat in shame and misery as he stumbles away.
Without thought to dignity or propriety, William shoves through colorful knots of tittering ladies. He hears the swell of raucous male laughter follow him out the door.
Back in the drawing room, a slim brunette in silk frowns hard in an unladylike way at William Pratt's abrupt departure.
"What a strange man!" Charles Henley says.
Thaddeus Stanton chuckles. "What a bore, you mean."
Charles laughs in agreement. "Too true. We're lucky you sent him running for the door, Stanton. Who knows how long our spirits would have been dampened by Pratt, otherwise."
Thaddeus tips his head in mocking acknowledgement. "Glad to be of service, ladies and gentlemen. Of course, had I known reading his dreadful writing aloud would have brought such quick results, I might have employed that tactic years ago."
"Oh, Mr. Stanton," a young lady in green exclaims. "You can't blame yourself!"
"Oh, yes you can," the frowning brunette mutters to herself. She stares at Thaddeus Stanton as if he were the muckiest of muck.
"My dear Miss Jenkins," Thaddeus says with what he obviously considers a great deal of charm. "Why the wrinkled brow?"
Anyanka Emmanuella Jenkins smiles thinly and not very convincingly. "A change of conversation would be nice."
Her somewhat abrupt words causes a surprised lull in conversation. Thaddeus rallies. "The lady is right, of course. Let us waste no more time on Mr. Pratt." Talk gradually returns to everyday matters—the latest societal gossip, the debate over ventilating the Met, the grisly murders in Whitechapel.
Eyes narrowed and hawkish, Anyanka watches Thaddeus Stanton's every move.
Her fingers stroke, absentmindedly, over an ornate pendant at the base of her throat.
The stagnant London night air presses against his feverish skin. William scrubs his eyes and trips over the cobblestones. "Bloody…watch where you're going!" William chokes out angrily as he bumps into several people. He quickly ditches the too-crowded main way and takes refuge in a dark alley to regain his composure.
"Fool!" William curses himself under his breath. He furiously pulls out the remains of his lovingly crafted poetry from his waistcoat and rips the parchment to shreds. If possible, William's heart breaks even further. He stares at the scraps of writing at his feet.
The woman of his dreams thought him beneath her. The world mocked his feelings and his poetry. All the tender parts of William feel bruised and exposed.
"God!" William cries, alone in the night. This was just too much.
"I wonder," a woman's fanciful voice sounds behind him. William jumps and turns to see a dark haired vision of beauty appear from the shadows. "What possible catastrophe came crashing down from heaven and brought this dashing stranger..." The woman reaches out and swipes the wetness from beneath William's eyes. "To tears?" She whispers, face very close.
Very, very close. William squirms. A thief?
She found him to be dashing?
"Nothing," William says quickly, embarrassed by his overflowing emotions. "I wish to be alone."
"I don't think you do," the woman murmurs, eyes dark and hooded. She stares at him like a cat would a mouse. William begins to feel a little hunted.
"I do." William says, unnerved by her unwavering attention. "What could you possibly know of it?"
"I've seen you," she continues dreamily, eyes staring somehow through and beyond him. "A man surrounded by fools who cannot see his strength. His vision. His glory. That, and burning baby fish swimming all 'round your head." She bobs her hand in imitation of swimming fish and glides ever closer.
William's back hits a wall. Good Lord, this woman was insane. William's hands twitch with the effort to remain still and not pat his pockets to check for his coin.
"Th-that's quite close enough!" William stutters. "You won't have my purse, so off with you."
The woman smiles in a predatory manner. William flushes, feeling her eyes on him like a caress.
"Don't want your purse. Your wealth lies here," she touches his heart. "And here." She touches his temple. "In the spirit and imagination. You walk in worlds the others can't begin to imagine."
William's face goes slack. It was as if she'd plucked the words from his very soul.
The woman's dark eyes seem to vibrate and glow. "I see what you want. Something glowing, and glistening. Something…" her eyes trail to the side then upward. A triumphant smiles stretches her cold lips. "Effulgent."
William's nerves are screaming. Every part of him that has been saying run is now saying yes, yes, that's it exactly.
Cold fingers, tracing his cheek, familiarly. "Do you want it?" she asks. An impulsive deviance suffuses William. He doesn't know what she means, but it sounds beautiful. Far too beautiful for a world such as his own.
"Yes," he breathes reverently. "God, yes!"
The woman who could read his heart giggles strangely, deep in her throat. "Of course you do, my William. This is meant to be. My darling, sweet boy…"
What? Unease creeps along the edges of William's desperate longing. Her hand cups his chin firmly. William tries to pull away, but finds he can't break her grip. The woman smiles at him, sweet and mischievous.
"My own brave Galahad. My black knight." William watches in astonished horror as something cracks and the graceful lines of her face mar. A monster.
Her lips are against his throat, tearing and sucking, before William can take another breath.
Tonight, I die, William thinks dazedly. After a small part of him fusses over the thought of his poor mother finding him in such a position, William relaxes into the painful bite, feeling oddly at peace.
All at once, the woman rips away with an inhuman growl. William sinks down to the ground, knees wobbly.
The dark eyed woman backs away. Opposite her, a golden haired angel glows under the gas lamp's light, her features washed away.
Feeling as though he were witnessing a religious intervention, William sags to one side and tries to clear his spectacles of their fog.
Red drips from the dark woman's mouth. William's blood.
His stomach turns and William leans over as his stomach violently rejects what little supper he had taken earlier.
Neither unearthly woman seems to notice.
"Oh, your face! Your face!" The golden girl exclaims, voice high and dramatic. "Something's wrong with your face!"
The dark one shakes her head, hair whipping like snakes. "Naughty Slayer, playing games. The stars melt back from the beetles in your brain. Sparks, everywhere you tread. You'll burn someone if you don't take a care."
Long straight skirts rustling against the ground, the slim blonde woman strides into the dark with William and the woman who nearly killed him. He wants to shout at her to warn her away from the danger, but his throat is closed tight with fear.
"As it so happens, I don't care." The newcomer raises her arm up as if to strike. William sees, of all things, a wooden stake in her clenched fist.
Oh, dear. They were doomed.
With a crunch, the monster's face melts back into familiar shapes and contours. William blinks rapidly, half-wondering if he'd imagined the entire spectacle.
"He's mine," the menacing creature hisses.
The golden girl holds her ground with the fiercest expression William's ever seen on a face.
"Not while I'm around," she utters, low and adamant.
Almost too fast to follow, the dark beauty lunges.
The golden girl spins to the side, elbows out, clocking her in the face and sending her stumbling. She then kicks out beneath her dark skirts so solidly that William hears something crack in the temptress' body.
Undeterred, the monstrous woman returns the attack, slashing through the air with clawed fingers. William gapes as a bare-knuckle, down and dirty fight rages between the two up and down the alley. It's fast and it's viscous. The force of the blows can't possibly be significant between two ladies, but each hit seems remarkably solid.
A thwarted punch by the golden girl reduces a nearby wooden support to kindling.
William feels quite dizzy. He touches his stinging throat and finds it to be wet. Inspection of his fingers reveals fresh blood.
"Ow," William says, as if surprised. In the background, the dark haired woman smashes a crate over the other's head. In retaliation, the golden girl strikes out with her fists, breaking the other woman's nose in a gruesome smear of blood and cartilage.
William fights to take even breaths, so as not to faint. He has never seen gore of this nature, this brawling, stinking fight.
Howling like a banshee, William's would-be killer runs off into the night, her figure swallowed up by the fog. With clear hesitation, his rescuer lets the other go and approaches him briskly.
"Are you all right?" She crouches down next to him. William cannot summon words. The golden girl is younger than he thought, just past marrying age. Perhaps eighteen years, give or take. Her beauty is youthful, but her eyes are old. Golden locks half-pinned back leave her sparkling green eyes free to shine. Her stubborn chin is held firm.
Blood splatters across her wrist-length white blouse. She seems unbothered by this fact.
William realizes that this valkerie of a woman before him is speaking to him.
"I-I beg your pardon?" William gasps. His rescuer's mouth flattens, but her eyes are compassionate.
"I said, did you drink from her?"
"Drink? I—there was no drinking here. She was…her face…she bit me! Like an animal!" And he had accepted it. Darkness threatens to overwhelm him, but William grips tightly to awareness. What on earth was he thinking?
He hadn't been. Was his life really so terrible that death in the arms of a monstrous siren was preferable to facing the coming morning?
The echo of his peers' laughter rings in William's ears.
Well, yes. But he could have at least put up a decent struggle. There were people depending on him, after all.
William's brain rattles in his skull as the girl shakes him. He opens his eyes. When had they closed? The beauty's face is twisted in a grimace. No polite expression or façade to be seen.
"…back to my…treat your wounds." The girl's words fade in and out of William's hearing.
He is helpless to do anything but try to get his feet under him as the girl hauls him up. Her arm wraps around his waist.
William's stomach flip flops. The heat and strength of her arm sinks through his waistcoat and into his touch-starved skin.
As if being carried, William nearly floats alongside the incredible girl, down the cobblestone road, around twists and turns and into a quiet residential area.
Though his vision threatens to black out, William clings to consciousness. The girl's arm never wavers from him.
He is determined not to miss a moment.