Nicole Clevenger (September 2014)
Notes: Even as I was typing this thing I swore I wouldn't write for this fandom, but Edmund Reid jumped into the ranks of my beloved fictional men with his very first scene and I found myself unable to stop it. Unlike all my other one shots, this is actually intended as the first chapter to something longer. Ordinarily I would wait until it was finished to post it, but it sits as one of three open fics I'm working on… for three different shows. The thought of all those words potentially going unseen as I struggle to complete something makes me a little sad, especially in such a small fandom. Something's better than nothing, right? Here's hoping.
I make no money, because they don't belong to me.
"Dammit, Reid – open your eyes."
Jackson's voice, close to his ear and demanding to be obeyed. His eyelids flutter open on this instruction not his own – how curious that this American seems to have such an influence. The smudged world gathers slowly into focus, the pattern of his suit wrinkled over the line of his outstretched leg. A patch of grey wool and the damp pavement just beyond. Confusion tickles as it comes to him that he must for some reason be on the ground. The throbbing in his skull does nothing to explain this.
Or perhaps it does; he wades sluggishly through his thoughts, striving to connect the dots. Jackson's breath on his cheek, the smoky scent of whiskey swallowed by the sharp tang of Whitechapel's streets as the other man pulls away. Even the shifting of his gaze is enough to flare the pain in his head; Reid swallows hard, lets his neck lay bowed as it is.
"Hey, you with me?"
Details begin to filter through, his universe inching its expansion beyond the scope of wool and puddled cobblestone. The chipped brick of a wall behind him, the morning's mist on his skin. The muffling angles of sound bringing the awareness that they must be off of the main thoroughfare. It isn't enough.
"Jackson." His voice is rough, unused, and its echo vibrates unpleasantly behind his eyes. "I confess I… know not how we came to arrive here. Nor where indeed 'here' might be." He feels Jackson shift beside him at this admission. Ignoring the lurch in both his gut and his vision, Reid tips his head up enough to bring the other man into his squinting line of sight.
Jackson crouches near his elbow, his features backlit by the fingers of the eastern sun feeling around the corner behind. The early light stabs at him, and Reid squeezes his eyes shut against its angry glare.
"And I'll bet you've got one hell of a headache too, a whack like that to the skull."
"Mmmm…" He can't deny it, despite how much he may wish to. Reid pulls his leg up to rest his forehead on a bended knee. The air here pulses strangely, pressing thick against him.
"Stay with me, Reid," his American insists. "Keep your eyes open."
Has he never before noticed the nasal tone the man carries? And something roiling beneath the surface, an undercurrent that bubbles quietly disturbed. Concern? An absurd notion, and one that Reid dismisses. He raises his head only enough that his words may escape to be heard.
"Perhaps then you'll enlighten me. Tell me of our circumstance." He intends it as an order, though it would be one of the first the American has taken. But his timbre falls short of command, and Jackson passes it by unassigned.
"Uh-uh. First I want to get you somewhere with better light. See if I need to stitch you up."
There's plenty of light here; Reid thinks he might gladly haunt this spot forever if it means not having to open his eyes to face it. What has happened this day? In the house of memory where recent events should reside, he finds nothing but bare floorboards and empty walls. A low murmuring of words indecipherable, ever hiding just ahead in the next room. Striving for it only increases the tempo pulsing out from the crown of his head, causes sweat to spring out at his temples.
The back of his neck feels wet. Cold.
His hand moves of its own accord to find the hair there matted and thick. The familiar slide of fingers on skin speaks of blood; it's a sensation he knows all too well. He needs not look at his hand to see it tinged red.
His teeth grind together as he brings his head up, and there are nearer to two Jacksons waiting beside him now. A splitting duplication akin to something under the captain's microscope. He decides not to mention this. "Indulge me," Reid says, swallowing again as the nausea claws at his throat. "We are on the street - not near Leman - lending credence to the theory of investigation, possibly pursuit." He closes his eyes against the double vision; one Yankee is enough. "Am I to instead assume we find ourselves suddenly at odds, and it was you who struck me? You are not so fickle as that, I think." He allows his heavy head to find its way back to his knee.
"And maybe you don't know me as well as you tell yourself you do," comes a grumble. It sparks bright in Reid's clouded mind, dissolving before he can grab onto it. Leaves behind a breath of loneliness, loss. His daughter's frightened eyes. His wife's pinched, falsified smile. Taking its cue, his ruined shoulder now chimes in, adding its notes to the chorus of his ache. Jackson clears his throat, and the sound scrapes at the inside of his head. "No, Reid. It wasn't me that hit you." This feels more meant to be heard.
"A pursuit then." It's a prompt as much for himself as for Jackson, the fog draping his thoughts draining him rapidly of his enthusiasm for this exercise. It's been ten months at least now since he's claimed a decent sleep, and no pillow's siren song has whispered so invitingly as the press of this one bony knee.
"A pursuit," Jackson concedes, "but the fella's long gone."
The shrug in the captain's voice irks him, as if what they do on these streets is mere sport. It's enough to lift his head, and he glares at the American's twinned form. "And you… what? Granted free passage? If you'd followed –"
"Followed and left you to bleed out on the stones? I couldn't tell how bad it was, Reid. From where I was standing, looked like he was aiming to take your head clean off." Jackson's anger is surprisingly defensive, and Reid drops his eyes.
Easier not to look at the man with that cursed sun behind him anyway.
"Did you see his direction? It will at least give us a start…"
"No. I told you: he's gone. 'Sides we know who he is - leastways I do and you did. We'll get you sorted out, and you can chase the bastard back and forth across the borough if that's what it takes." A hand on his bicep, his elbow. "C'mon. Up."
He doesn't register the words before Jackson's hauling him to his feet; the world swirls and flickers, and Reid's plunged back into that dark roaring river, devoid of orientation. His legs buckle, and it's only Jackson's grasp on his arm that keeps him standing. There's no room for awareness of this in his struggle to breathe. His chest burns, fire shrieking the length of his collarbone.
The remembered water drags at him. His vision fades and greys.
"Shit." Jackson's grip is bruising; he shoves Reid up against the wall. His spine hits a second before his shoulder, and he sucks in a gasp of air as white hot agony rips down his left side. Minutes, hours, days before the world begins to right itself; things solidify slowly around him, and he wonders if this is what it would feel like were one to touch a live electric current.
"Goddammit, Reid, I am not carrying your sorry carcass home, do you hear me?"
Home. The word conjures always first an image of his little girl. "Leman Street," he scratches out.
"What?"
Reid blinks his eyes open; Jackson's looking at him oddly. It leads him to question if the words that have come out of his mouth are the same that he heard in his head. "We go… to Leman Street. It is as close, is it not?"
A gamble. Much more Jackson's forte.
The captain is still watching him. Finally he shakes his head. "Hell, you don't even know where we are." He releases his hold on Reid's arm, raises his hands in a motion of surrender. "Fine. Whatever you say."
There's a surge of gratitude when Jackson doesn't press him to explain this choice - either Jackson, for disturbingly there still are two. Reid brings his hand up to rub sense into his treacherous eyes, his arm halted halfway when he catches sight of the blood on his fingers. He retrieves his handkerchief from its pocket, works to wipe them clean. To no avail. The blood has stained inky his skin.
The bills posted on the wall behind him crackle their displeasure when he shifts against them. His shoulder and head now play from the same sheet of music, their beat tuned to harmonize. A rhythm determined to eclipse all others. He can not say where Jackson's gone, the limit of his field of sight extending past his reddened fingers only to the black of his shoes. He dare not raise his head in search of the other man. Pain and its threatening leave him listless.
No doubt the captain will return.
As he does, stepping back in front of him with Reid's crumpled hat hanging from his hand. "Here, put this on," the American says. "You look like a walking cadaver."
The hat is forced down onto his head, the handkerchief yanked from his fingers. Jackson spits into the fabric, using the moisture to scrub at Reid's neck near his ear. It's an automatic gesture that rings unexpectedly intimate; there's a frozen moment when both seem to realize this. Reid pulls a breath of the cold stinking morning air in through his nose, fighting to ground himself as Jackson suddenly steps away.
"Hell with it," the other man says, pushing the cloth back into Reid's hand without meeting his eyes. "You're gonna need a bucket to get all that off. Let's get outta here."
Reid leverages himself off the wall. The street dips under his feet, resettling with an unnatural tilt. His gorge rises at this unbalance, pride resolving of itself an attempt to keep this disquiet from his expression. It matters not – Jackson is moving onward, already several feet ahead, and Reid wills his body to follow in the man's footsteps. Somewhat to his surprise, it does as it is bid. The American lights a cigarette, and he coughs as a breeze picks up to blow the sticky smoke directly into his face. A series of tiny explosions burst randomly through his head; with every step this narrow alleyway brightens. He wishes himself anywhere but here.
The thought makes him chuckle bleakly at his own folly. He can recall no time in his life when simply wishing has made something so.
And today grants no exception. Reid releases his tight grip on his lapel – a brace physical and emotional, and one failing miserably at both – to tug the brim of his dented hat down toward his eyes. Leman Street, he tells himself. And there the promise of rest, at least for a time.
Jackson stops walking when they reach the end of the alley; Reid catches him up a moment later where it empties out onto a more travelled road. Plenty of people, he sees, but no hint of a hansom. He bites off a frustrated groan, slumping against a brick wall making up one of the intersection's sharp corners. Too much it seems, even to ask this of the universe.
He doesn't lean there long; the captain's eyes swing over to study him, and Reid straightens under his gaze. He will not take pity from this man nor any other. Besides, there's been so much worse in the months near to this. Jackson scowls at him, apparently whatever he sees still being cause enough for some distress. "Maybe I should go on ahead. See if I can find us a hansom." It comes a self-directed mumble, Reid given to the impression that he's not expected to answer. It rankles to be spoken of as if he were not here, even when such discourse couches itself in the form of monologue.
"It is nothing," Reid tells him, moving purposefully away from the wall. He wonders if it sounds as unconvincing to Jackson as it does to his own ear. "We shall walk."
"'Nothing' ain't powerful enough to thieve a chunk of a man's memory, Reid."
"Even so." He has no desire to spend his limited energies arguing this; he starts off down the street with nothing more than a blind guess as to the correct direction. Jackson follows, soon matches his pace. Reid pretends to take no notice of the sidelong glances cast his way.
His stuttering mind searches for a diversion as they make their way down the busy street. "His name," Reid demands of his American. "The one we follow."
Jackson sighs; it's a weary sound for so early in the day. "We ain't following anybody. We're headed back to that shiny new deadroom, so I can fix you up."
"Yes, yes - I assure you, Captain, I'm not as far gone as that." This effort at normalcy bleeds impatience into Reid's words, warring with the endeavor's intended purpose. His jaw clenches as he works to even his tone. "Educate me as we travel. That it may spark a dormant recollection."
The other man takes an audible drag from his cigarette. "All right: Wharton. That ring any bells?"
It does not, and Reid distantly supposes he should be more concerned. There's a criminal on the loose, after all. Were he returned to his right mind, able to stand apace distant from this distraction of scattered light and fragmented thought, he imagines this temporal gap would be far more disturbing. It certainly seems that it should be.
"No. The plot?"
Jackson flicks down his butt, grinds it out under his shoe without breaking stride. He shrugs. "Penny-dreadful usual. Your boys fished a body out of the river a day back; we sleuthed our way to Wharton. Man bolted as soon as we knocked on his door. If it hadn't been for that commotion at the end of the alley stealing your attention, we'd have had him at no cost to ourselves."
There's a vague memory of the body, though who's to really say if it was this one or the last. Pulling a corpse from the water is sadly not uncommon. A flicker of something else as well, a conversation with Jackson, the white tiles of the deadroom as backdrop. About… peanuts? Reid frowns, unsure if this last even relates to the case. Or truly if it took place at all.
His eyes are downcast out of necessity now, the glare becoming too much to take. It outlines the world's shapes bold and unfamiliar, lends people and objects a sickening new relief. He must trust the captain competent enough to keep a look out for their ride. It seems nearly all he can manage to continue moving forward.
Someone bumps into him as they pass, and he stumbles into Jackson to his left. Reid hisses through his teeth as his shoulder screams, clutching at his lapel as he rights himself. Or attempts to. His companion stops; Reid has no choice but to do the same. He's under the American's scrutiny again. Those eyes missing little despite what others may think.
It's a secret weapon, of sorts, having Jackson by his side. It helps that the man virtually cultivates his own underestimation.
He finds, however, that it's decidedly less enjoyable when he's the subject of the captain's concentration; he much prefers the role of spectator. He fights to get his breath level, the spike of pain gradually evening out into the rest. He sees in Jackson's eyes the making of a decision.
"Stay here," the man tells him. "Sit down or something. I'll be back."
Reid balks at the notion he is to be left here, an invalid set aside until fetched; he'd had plenty of that in the hazy weeks following the wreck, when there was little he could accomplish for himself. Not to mention his is a face somewhat recognizable, seen often on these streets and thrice published during the harrowing months that were Ripper. It would not do show weakness here.
And he refuses to take orders from an American, even if that American is his own. With as stern a look as he can muster – to drive this last point, at least - Reid turns away from Jackson. Picks up their path down the road, leaving the other man to do nothing but follow.
Ten torturous minutes later, and they find themselves at the far end of Lower Chapman. There comes a small flush of pride as Reid notes this – even with his brain leaking from his skull, he can never be long lost on Whitechapel's streets. It's much louder here, the rush of people swelling to drown him in their wake. They hurry past, blurry and jostling. Every breath he takes is clogged thick with them.
Jackson grabs his arm when he sways, the contact pinning him into to the present. They're still some distance from Leman Street, one that today he would definitely not choose to walk. Thankfully, the captain is able to quickly hail an empty hansom, and the cab cuts through the throng to head their way.
Reid thinks the doubled black conveyance with its out of focus horse may be one of the more beautiful things he's ever seen.
His foot misses the step on its first attempt, his battered brain misjudging both the angle and the height. Jackson says nothing behind him, but Reid doesn't doubt his witness. The second effort comes more easily, and he drags himself up and into the seat. The shift in altitudes does little to keep the world still, a vicious vertigo not alleviated as they set off. Jackson lights another cigarette. Reid lays his hat in his lap and covers his eyes with a hand, trying to block out the light.
Three days now they've had showers. Today the sun beams down with a mocking cheer that he struggles not to see as personal.
He can feel every stone as they roll bouncing along. Hear every metal strike as if their horse this day newly shod. Desperate for distraction, Reid forces his mouth to form words. "This man, this… Wharton. We are certain of his guilt?"
"Nothing looks quite so guilty as running. 'Cept maybe assaulting a lawman as you go."
The smoke fills the shell of the open cabin, gathering the air harsh and close. It sneaks under his hand, his lids, to smolder against the curve of his eyes. "No other suspects?"
"One. Jesus, you don't remember any of this?" Jackson's laugh is a short bark of sound; Reid winces. "I woulda laid money you had a harder head than that."
A particularly dramatic jump as they go over a hole in the road; Reid's hand is jarred from his forehead, his stomach flipped into his throat. Another billyclub bash to the back of this head as his body is jerked up and down on the hard seat. He can't breathe in here, choked by that bloody smoke. "A risk then? For flight?" His voice rumbles through his skull.
"You saw him. Looked like that birdie was flyin' to me."
His fingers tug at the knot in his tie, fumbling against his high collar. He can feel the sweat inching down his sideburns. He grits his teeth against the nausea, growing more undeniable with every choppy meter. He was never a man victim to sea sickness, not before that awful night, but he imagines now he understands the sensation. Behind his eyelids, his memory paints flickering orange flames across Cimmerian waters. He pleads silently with the world to be still.
"'Course, the man's got that sister…" Jackson muses, his words curling around Reid's head like the vapor of his exhalations. "Could be we find him through her. Nothing like family when you need a place to – Hey, you all right? You're looking a little peaked."
The smell of something cooking, rank and steaming, twines through the breeze to his sensitive nose. It nudges his body into an overload. "No. I… I fear I –" He can express nothing more coherent than this, before he's lurching forward to retch over the side of the cab, adding to the muck of the street. "Forgive me," he mumbles, long moments later as he slumps back onto the seat. He wipes at his mouth, avoiding the bloodied pink end of his handkerchief.
He feels shaky. Exposed.
"Christ, Reid – you have a concussion. Know what that means? Means your brains got bashed around in your skull. Cut yourself some fucking slack for once. Relax." The captain's voice is unaccountably angry, but Reid finds he has not the strength to dig for the emotion's cause. He says nothing, turning his head away from the other man. Brings his arm back up to shield his eyes once more.
It must be that he drifts for a time, for sooner than seems possible the American is rousing him with a hand on his shoulder. Reid blinks out at the familiar street, unable to say where it is that his mind has been. An empty wandering far from the usual polar divergence of his nightmares. The fear that the Ripper will return. The dread that his daughter will not.
He adjusts the collar of his coat in an effort to hide the worst of the blood. Retrieves his hat from where it has fallen to the floor of the coach. He pulls in a deep breath as he disembarks, his chin forced up and his back tensed rigidly straight. Detective Inspector. Head of this shop, and imperative that he appear so.
It's louder still inside than out, the noise here condensed to magnify. Artherton looks up when he pushes through the door, and a small whisper warns that it will not be so easy simply to pass him by. There are days when his desk sergeant seems determined to supply him with, if anything, too much information.
No, he does the man a disservice: he can't fault him for doing his duty. And Reid does not wish to let any details slip past notice, not when they concern his streets. Artherton calls to him in greeting. Reid's sigh is lost under the clamor of the crowded station house.
It's a mundane report the sergeant has to offer, a few minor misdemeanors in the hours since he's been gone. The black lines of the roll book jump about their page, Artherton's neat script smudged and indecipherable to his bleary eye. Still he makes a show of studying the mess, even manages a nod when the sergeant points to one of the inky smears. A robbery, he gathers, though he gleans little else. Reid leans heavily against the desk, working to make it appear as if the wood is not holding most of his weight. An illusion, if successful, worthy of the Incomparable Albini himself.
Artherton's voice buzzes around his head, darting in and out of the general roar of noise that ebbs and flows around him. He realizes he's not really been listening, his attention trapped by – of all things – the sergeant's facial hair. This wretched double vision has practically leant the fuzzy whiskers a life of their own. Reid blinks hard, his eyes searching for elsewhere on the man's face to rest, but the beard seems to have swallowed all else.
The light coming in the window behind lends the sergeant's countenance a glittering halo. Shattered and sparkling, it reminds him of the view through a kaleidoscope, a favorite toy of his daughter.
"Sorry, Artherton," Jackson says, coming up behind him. "Reid and me got business can't wait."
Jackson steers him abruptly from the desk, Artherton's protesting indignant as his report is interrupted mid-sentence. Reid feels perhaps he should say something to mollify him - an acknowledgement of the American's habitual lack of manners, at least - but the captain's firm hand on his back guides him forward down the hallway before his brain can arrange the words in their correct order.
He thinks to separate himself from this unasked for support. It's a surprisingly comforting connection, a fixed point in this flexing sea of narrow corridors and too many uniforms. It's one he finds he does not truly wish to sever. And yet. There are appearances to be upheld.
Reid shrugs off the captain's hand, throwing open the deadroom's door. Sunlight gleams off the green and white tile, a fate he cannot escape even here. "Mark me no invalid," he growls. He refuses to examine his irritation. To name if it springs from his indulgence in the contact or from its loss.
"Yeah a couple minutes more, you coulda told it to Artherton. When I was scraping you up off the floor." Jackson closes the door behind them. He tosses his hat onto a countertop still new enough to be dazzlingly clean. Reid remembers the joy at revealing to the captain this room. "Seriously, Reid - you looked near to taking a dive that would've made Drake proud. Sit."
Reid's annoyance fizzles, there being no energy left to sustain it. He does as he is bid, the stiff-backed wooden chair creaking as he settles wearily, awkwardly. The thought comes now that the world might continue indefinitely in this way, that he'll never again regain balance. He almost moans aloud with the notion.
He collapses forward in slow motion, bending to rest his weight on his knees and his head in his hands. "Tell me, Captain," Reid makes himself say, each word careful in its casual enunciation, "might this wound prove mortal? Were it so, I would have you end my misery now…" It's meant to be a joke of sorts, an olive branch. Though he speaks only half in jest.
"You'll be fine," Jackson says, and his voice is much closer than Reid is expecting. "Here." A glass, smooth and cool, is pressed against the back of his hand.
Reid lifts his head, his eyebrows rising in question. The expression shits along his scalp unpleasantly, and he drops it quickly as he takes the glass. "Cocaine and tonic water," Jackson elucidates, as Reid studies the bubbles in the clear liquid. He plucks Reid's hat from his head, flicking it to join his own.
Reid finishes off the prescription in one swallow, the twin bitterness of the cocaine and quinine serving only to alter the horrid taste in his mouth, not remove it. He runs his tongue over his lips, his teeth, the beginnings of a faint numbness there making them foreign. The pain in his head melts similarly dull, localizing itself into an ache nearer to the wound itself.
The images presented by his eyes, however, remain stubbornly duplicated.
With a groan that he doesn't intend to let free, Reid allows his sinking head to hang as it will. The glass dangles precariously from his fingertips. The artificial energy clashes with the exhaustion of his body, the trauma to his brain; they butt up against each other to cocoon him in a pocket of slightly wired indifference. An odd sense of urgently needing to do something, but without the reserves to marshal for even an attempt toward the discovery as to what. Jackson prods at the injury and he winces, keeping his eyes on the floor. The tiles swim in and out of definition; there's a substance caked over the sole of one shoe that he can only hope will turn out to be mud. Reid closes his eyes. Jackson's hand disappears, and Reid hears his footsteps. Water running.
Still the jet of liquid from the syringe manages to be something of a shock; Reid jerks reflexively away. "Hold still," Jackson says to the back of his head, sluicing away blood and what feels to be skin. "Gotta make sure this gets clean." The stream of water probes the wound firm as an icepick. Reid fights against the impulse to swat at his hand like a petulant child.
It occurs that he never agreed to this, that the American has been directing his footsteps all day. He knows not when he became so congenial with this man, that this role reversal should slip over them without notice. He finds the fact of it somehow less disturbing than his inability to recall when it was that he'd relinquished so much control.
"You want me to stick you before I close this up?"
He shakes his head, a mistake recognized when the motion sends the room sloshing around him. "Get on with it, man."
The disinfectant alone is enough to make him regret his decision, the stinging of the harsh carbolic acid spreading outward from the wound as if an egg had been cracked over his head. But he has no desire to hinder the surgeon's momentum, would choose no delay to extend this experience. He grits his teeth and says nothing as Jackson pierces the unanaesthetized skin with his needle.
He cannot say how many stitches go in, the fire dancing over his scalp immediately overwhelming any tracking of their progress. It's a burn that soon swells all-consuming, eroding his awareness to blot out Jackson, the deadroom entire. His body aflame – it's too familiar a sensation still. His bruised mind is overeager in its fluid morphing of this day into the hell of that night, happy to fling him back into fresh memories of pain and terror. Fire and water, her blue eyes wide and scared. The sickening impotence as he struggles uselessly under the searing press of the metal. The way it tears at his skin as he fights to reach her.
Reid drags in a breath through his nose. Forces himself to feel the solid floor hard under his shoes, the cramping of his hand in its grip on the chair's seat. He will not succumb to this, refuses to allow his nightmares such an incursion into his waking hours. It feels a feeble stand he makes, the screams of the dead crowding his head with their echoes. Prying his eyes open, he begins a deliberate if stumbling count of the blurry tiles he can see between his feet. He loses count of their number more than once, but it serves to hold his attention to here in the room.
"Done," Jackson finally says above him. The word a lovely thing even in his flat, foreign accent.
Reid shifts his jaw, trying to relax the rock of muscles there. He hears the strike of a match as Jackson lights another cigarette.
"You want," the captain drawls, "I can take a look at that shoulder…"
"No." The offer rides too closely on the coattails of the flashback, Jackson working some mentalist hocus pocus to reach in and grab at his thoughts. He upsets the chair as he bolts to his feet; the tiles smear as they go into their spin, and he has to catch himself on the occupied table in the center of the room. Reid battles to level out his breathing from these pathetic gulps of air, orders himself to be calm. Jackson's cigarette hangs forgotten from his fingers as the captain gapes at him.
"No," Reid repeats after a moment, this time with more a semblance of stability. "That won't be necessary." He realizes his hand is flattened against his chest. His arm feels stiff and disobedient as he forces it down to his side.
The American's eyes bore into him, but whatever Jackson's meaning to say next is lost with the opening of the door. Reid shifts his hold on the table, pretending a study of their water-logged corpse as Drake enters. The sergeant pauses just over the threshold, his hand still on the doorknob. A frown creases his features as he takes in the scene, something he sees derailing him from his intended purpose.
"All well, sir?" he asks hesitantly.
Drake sports an impressive shiner, and Reid recalls now that there are deep bruises on his ribs to match. Last night's hunt for their second suspect gone pear-shaped, a pub by the docks filled with patrons who held no great love for the color blue. If the man they'd sought had been there, he'd escaped when the melee broke out; Drake and his boys had held their own, but strength and courage often still bend to superior numbers and the unpredictability of a drunk in his cups. It seems there's little defense to be had against the unseen jab of a truly lucky right cross.
An explanation, then, for why it was Jackson and not Drake at his side today. He remembers now he'd expected no trouble; there had been few assurances that they'd even find Wharton at home. Jackson had already been present at the shop when Reid arrived – an aberration he reminds himself he'd thought worth delving into – and the expression on Artherton's face moaned long suffering. There was a paper recently read that he'd wished to discuss with the captain, regarding Doctor Freud's current work in the study of migraine. When the tip regarding the address was received, it had seemed a prudent enough decision to grant his battered detective sergeant a rest and relieve his beleaguered department by taking the American with him instead.
Not that Drake had voiced any manner of complaint. Reid suspects that his ever doing so might herald the end of days.
"Indeed," he lies, their bloated corpse far too near to his face. He hears Jackson scoff from somewhere off to his right. He refuses to turn and look at the man as he pushes himself straight to stand away from the table. "What news, Sergeant?"
"I…uh…" Drake looks uncertain, his instincts still unsettled. Under that muscle lurks a policeman's senses, observational skills too easily dismissed; Reid wishes this were not a situation in which his sergeant would choose to prove this. But the man is also reliably obedient, and Drake rouses himself out of any speculation to answer the question that's been put to him. "That Irish what gave us the slip last night, sir. The boys just brought him in."
"Oh." Reid can think of nothing else to say. "Good."
The day looms long ahead.
A beat later, and his brain prompts that this information should serve as his cue. An interrogation to be run, though backed with details that are still trickling in too slowly, murky in their serialized reveal. He needs to reacquaint himself with the facts of this case, but they may not have the time to waste with their other suspect on the lam. If this man they hold is not their perpetrator, each minute passing only puts Wharton further from their grasp.
Reid takes a few weary steps toward Drake and the door, assuring himself that even the vaguest line of inquiry can stumble over an answer or two. And, if nothing else, the cells will prove much dimmer than this reflective bowl of light that the deadroom has somehow become. A blessing there, at least. The prospect has grown almost to the promise of an escape when Jackson's voice floats nonchalantly from near the window.
"Unless you're lookin' to lend your questioning a touch of the macabre, you might want to clean up a bit first."
Reid sees Drake's eyes slide to his collar. He gets a glimpse of himself now in the shine of an empty silver tray on the cart to his left; even warped and dulled in metal, this image does indeed look ghastly. He can't see the back of his head, but the side of his neck above the high collar is abstractly creased with a startling amount of blood.
"Of course." It's a mumble, his eyes caught by this version of himself. He blinks, turns away to break its spell. "I shall join you shortly," he tells Drake, in a voice sounding closer to his own.
Drake's mouth works as if he has designs on saying something else, but he presses his lips together and departs the room with a nod. Reid moves to the sink as the door closes behind him, doing his best to ignore Jackson. He keeps his back to the other man as he labors to remove his coat, relieved that the other man has no view of the grimace that pulls at his face. It strains no bounds of imagination to know the captain is watching him. He feels himself a moth pinned to a board by its wings.
The water rushes clean from the tap when he turns it on; Reid leans over the double sink, cupping a hand to splash it cool over the back of his neck. It trickles down the line of his jaw to drip pink against the white of the porcelain. He's dousing his collar as much as his skin, but he suspects there's nothing to be done for this shirt. He'll have to make a trip home after all, should he wish to truly remove the evidence.
Later.
A touch of the macabre. Jackson's words whisper through the flood of water running next to his ear. As if months spent wrist-deep in gore hunting the worst killer they had ever seen were not already enough to permanently paint the place so. He lives a constant struggle to put that gruesome time behind them, to daily declare these people free from the shadow of that menace. But he suspects there are some lived through those months who will forever tie those memories to Whitechapel's streets. Though he would like to pretend otherwise, the macabre is no stranger here.
A few drops of water slip over his collarbone to tickle down his chest. Reid shuts the faucet off, mopping at his neck with a waiting towel. Jackson is unnervingly quiet. "You have something to say?" Reid asks, squinting at the man's backlit form.
Jackson shrugs, inhaling deeply on the cigarette. He exhales through his nose, the smoke coiling up into his hair. "You know me, Reid. Always got something to say."
"But not usually so reticent in the saying of it." The cold caress of the water had for a moment begun to soothe some of the pain in his head; now removed from it he can already feel its tendrils creeping back. He pinches the bridge of his nose, the image coming of a boy trying to stem the holes in a dyke with his fingers. "Speak, man."
"Go home." Jackson stubs out his cigarette in a shallow glass bowl that's already overflowing. He crosses the room, takes the towel from Reid's hand to sling it over the edge of the sink. "Send Drake out to the sister's," he says, to answer the protest Reid's lips are still shaping. "Man may not be Holmes, but he's competent enough to ask a few questions. Go home, draw a bath. The rest'll keep."
He resists the implication that finding this man's killer should not be their priority. "Easily said by one who comes and goes as he pleases." It's snapped out, intended to sting. "Do we not owe every crime our diligence?"
Jackson scowls at him. "Not what I meant, Reid." It seems now that the American stands uncomfortably close; Reid turns to retrieve his coat as an excuse to put a step between them. Jackson sighs, a frustrated sound. "All I'm saying is you should listen to your doctor."
This brings his head up quickly, and he can't hide the wince at the bolt of lightening through his skull. "You are not my doctor," he grinds through his teeth.
"You should be grateful. Not many a man with a private surgeon on hand."
He should be grateful, and he's uncertain as to why he is not. Other than the sense that this title seems to grant the American a status entrusted to few others, perhaps none. But why shouldn't it be so? It had been no spouting of mere flattery when he'd told Jackson he valued his surgeon's skills over the drunks on his payroll. He can think of no other he'd rather name his physician.
He understands not how this man, often of so like a mind, can so easily find way under his skin. He wonders if the blame can be laid with nationality.
"Like to see Drake trying to stitch you up," Jackson grumbles. Reid thinks that at least one of the two captains is sulking.
He has no time or patience for the American's fit of pique. His heart beats sluggishly in the back of his head, in his ears against the stillness of the deadroom. It lends his words a jagged, irritated shape. "I would be grateful were you to take up the task for which you are employed. Does this body have nothing else to tell us?"
"I dunno. I haven't yet figured the name of the man's favorite tune, so there's that..."
Reid brushes past the sarcasm, his jaw tense and aching. "We have a body, Jackson, and two suspects. Anything you discover could prove helpful. Sooner, rather than later, would be appreciated."
Jackson turns away, digging in his pockets for another cigarette. He puts it between his lips, the thin roll of paper and plant suspended there unlit as he leans over the grey corpse. "Sure, Reid. That's what I feel. Appreciated."
There's a twinge of something as his American shuts him out, a sensation that's flavored slightly sad. But he has not the energy to spend on introspection. Draping his coat over his left forearm allows him to brace his throbbing shoulder, by keeping the arm tight to his side without the position being obvious. Small favors, he thinks, as he crosses the room. By the time he's reached the door, Jackson has yet to glance up.
Reid leaves the captain to his pointedly play-acted examination.