Title: Whitechapel
Fandom: X-men
Pairing: Pryde/Wisdom
Rating: PG/13
Prompt: 045 Moon
Summary: AU. 1888. A gruesome serial killer has begun terrorizing Whitechapel.
Policeman Peter Wisdom doesn't really like the dark. It gives him too much time to think. It forces him to wonder what's to be done about his father, all alone in that God-forsaken asylum, to think about whether or not his sister, who joined a group of gypsy fortune tellers years ago, has food in her belly or a pillow under her head.
And lately, it gives him too much time to think about what's happened to his city.
The killings have everyone terrified. No one seems to know from where the next body, mutilated beyond all decent reason, will come. People are scared to walk the streets at night, and even the alleyways, where anyone could find a woman willing to do anything for a few shillings, are down to the bare minimum of truly desperate hags, toothless and hungry.
Peter ignores their cries for money, favors, or charity, winding his way through until he can once again return home where even more darkness waits.
The moon is high in the sky tonight, and would almost be pretty were it not for the terrible feelings of pain, fear, and anxiety that have taken hold of his city like a vice.
He's just finished with his shift when he sees her. Katie. She's lounging against a wall behind Donahue's pub, her dress falling down on one thin, pale shoulder. Her dark brown hair falls in limp ringlets down her back, and she clutches her blue cloak tighter around herself against the falling, early September chill. She's prettier than the rest of the whores that still remain, and Peter smiles, moving in her direction, seemingly involuntarily.
"Hullo." She smiles at him when he comes close. "I don't suppose yer lonely tonight, either?" She shrugs, and her cloak almost slips down again. Peter grips it, lifting it back up onto her shoulders.
"I am, but not enough to pay a woman for the privilage of her company, just as always." He shakes his head lightly. "I don't suppose that you are going to listen to my protests, once again, that you are far too young and too pretty to be aspiring no higher than this for yourself."
She chuckles in a very un-feminine way, and then coughs, her bones practically rattling with the force of it.
"Unless yer offerin' to pay fer me services on a permanent basis, Constable, it's here that I'll be stayin'."
"I just wish you'd reconsider. Particularly with everything that has been happening around here, lately. It's terrible what's been going on. And it seems that ladies in your particular… idiom are in more danger than others."
"That ain't necessarily true." She shrugs again. "Maddie says that the last one weren't no whore at all."
"To be fair, Chief Macnaghten isn't entire certain who she was."
"We'd know if she were one of us. Maddie says she ain't. Well, weren't."
"You know, you might want to volunteer some of this information to the police. They might be able to compensate you for your efforts, and you could stop this vile vocation of yours for at least a few evenings."
"'F I 'ad any money, I'd buy me some drink wiv it, I think. Would keep me warm, that would."
"I think, to be honest Katie, that that is the absolute last thing that you are in need of."
"Heh." She coughed again. "Yer gonna tell me what I'm needin' now. I'm gonna tell ya what I've told yer every time ye've been by 'ere tryin' to tell me wot I need. Either pay me fer a bit o' comfort or get goin'."
"We both know that that is not going to happen. I think much too highly of you."
"That's nice an' all, but if yer don' mind, there are men 'round 'ere who don' think so highly o' me, an' they might actually help me t'live another day."
"You could be someone of much greater value." Peter really believes this. In fact, every time he runs into her in this alley, he wants to take her far away where he can make her into a real lady.
"Anyone could be anyone if they've got the money." She sighs. "'S all about money. Y'know that, aye?"
"I suppose that you are more than likely correct."
"Don't suppose you've got any, then? Just a bit? Somethin'?" She blinks at him, stepping closer in the dark, misty air of the alleyway.
He hands her a few shillings. He always does. He can't walk away without giving her anything. Especially not when she's so obviously hungry and sick. The poor thing will probably be dead of consumption within the year. She smiles. "Thanks. Y'know, yer don' 'ave to leave wivout nothin' ta show fer it. I really could make yer life a little brighter fer a minute. 'Sides, you never want nothin'."
"I—" He stops, his token refusal on the tip of his tongue, but then reconsiders. After all, the only plans he has for the evening involve having one too many drinks at a local tavern with John and then stumbling back to his house to make himself some tragic dinner and read until he can no longer bear to keep his eyes open.
Besides, she really is perfectly beautiful, somehow, as though she wasn't meant to be this, at all, but that the universe has, instead, played a cruel joke on him, and an even crueler one on her.
"Well?" She smiles. She has more "'S a nice bit o' alley back this way. Wiv all the other girls too scared to be out these days, it's nice an' deserted."
He goes with her. Against his better judgment, and against the train of logic raging through his mind. He keeps telling himself that this is beneath him. That he's never had to pay for the company of a woman in all of his life, and he certainly shouldn't now. Of course, then, his logic responds that this is different. She is different.
Her hands are cold and rough, calloused with picking locks to sleep in empty buildings, and with the roughness of the cobblestones on which she sleeps when there aren't any empty buildings available. Regardless, her hands are skilled and the rest of her is equally gifted.
The act itself is even better than he would have thought. He would have expected a perfunctory and, perhaps, more detached experience. After all, one could hardly expect someone to be bothered to feign pleasure or emotion when all of your pleasure or emotions have financial value. Authentic joy surely has to be too precious to simply give away, and especially to him with his few shillings.
She gives it anyway. At least, he thinks she does. He wonders, at the back of his mind, how one can ever really tell with a woman in her occupation. All he knows is that there is nothing contrived or put-on about the sensations that she evokes in him, and he can only hope that he's managed to give her a fraction of it.
Afterwards, she smiles at him, rearranging her skirts and readjusting the top of her dress.
"'Ere now. Innit that better than just givin' away yer money?"
"Indescribably so." He nods.
"Good. Now, get goin'. I got me some other customers, mebbe."
She kisses him on the cheek, then. A kiss that is soft, and seems so unlike this tough and battle-worn shell of a woman that he has come to know. The kiss seems to light fire to his cheek and burn its way deeper than skin, and onto what has to be his very bone.
He feels that burn the whole time that he walks away from her, and imagines that he can still feel it through most of the night that he spends, as predicted, in the tavern with John. In fact, he thinks that it is a miracle that John can't see it.
He has barely made it to sleep, and has just begun dreaming about her, when the pounding begins. He opens the door to find Constable Miller who tells him that they've found another body. He redresses sluggishly and follows his colleague to the scene to help with crowd control or whatever else the Inspector has him do.
The moon is still in the sky, but it's fading now into dawn. The slight light seems to make London all the more eerie, and he wonders if this feeling is ever going to stop.
"Who is it this time, Miller?"
"Another girl, innit? They found 'er a few hours ago. The Inspector says that he's 'ad it with this. He's gonna be out fer blood if they ever find this Ripper, I'll tell you."
"It certainly is enough to make you wonder what on Earth could make someone capapble of this monstrous behaviour." Peter nods, wiping sleep from his eyes.
"Personally, I don't care much meself." Miller shrugs. "Someone what can do this and sleep at night deserves nothin' better than hell itself."
Peter doesn't have anything to say to that. It doesn't matter, however, because they've arrived at the crime scene.
Peter sees the shawl first. Inspector Macnagten himself is blocking his view of the body, but that familiar scrap of blue fabric lying, stained with blood, on the ground, bears witness to a fact that he finds himself more and more unwilling to accept.
Suddenly, Peter doesn't think that hell itself seems punishment enough.