Author's note: As mentioned in the synopsis, this story also takes place during 'Blood at The Wheel'. Given this, there are some scenes and/or lines of dialogue that I lifted more or less directly from the episode in order to respect the storyline and to have a base to expand my own scenes from. It goes without saying that those parts aren't mine, as well as the characters and some settings.
Chapter 1 - Not the lost past, but the lost future
"Suddenly [he] realized that what [he] was regretting was not the lost past but the lost future, not what had not been but what would never be."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, A Nice Quiet Place
«I'm sorry to interrupt, sir, but Constable Collins has called. I'm sorry, I'm afraid I may have some bad news… apparently a friend of Miss Fisher has reported that she died in a motorcar accident. The connection wasn't very good - I'm very sorry, sir».
When Constable Brown told him this, Jack didn't register it right away. He was looking at him, and listening to everything the other man had said, but it was as if his brain was still caught up in filling out the remaining paperwork concerning Harry Harper's murder.
«Miss Fisher is dead?», Jack said eventually in a faint and disbelieving tone, more to himself that to Brown when the full meaning of those words finally hit him.
He was glad he was seated because suddenly he felt very weak at the knees, at every limb and joint actually, and would have fallen to the ground at once otherwise. He even seemed to have stopped breathing for more seconds than what could be done. His mouth felt very dry. He tried to swallow that feeling away but it only worsened it instead of making it more bearable.
«I'm very sorry, sir. Is there anything I can help you with?», said Brown earnestly. Everybody at the station was used to seeing Miss Fisher out and about carrying her investigation alongside the police whether Inspector Robinson wanted it or not. Some shock was expected of course, but that substantial reaction wasn't exactly what he had pictured his boss to have.
Jack tried his best to contain the consternation and the grief that had shaken him to the core and which was starting to take hold of him, proportional to the time that had passed since a dead Phryne Fisher had become part of his reality.
«Where…where was the accident, I mean?»
«Vinson Road, sir. That's the incident Constable Collins was called for. »
«Thank you, Brown. You can go now.»
The policeman nodded and left. Both of them knew that Jack needed to be alone for some minutes.
He allowed himself to close his eyes for a moment. He wasn't very given to tears but he wished he had some running down his face at that instant. Perhaps they could help to ease the pain – if only for a little – for minutes enough for him to drive there and see her one last time.
Jack didn't know where that thought had come from but he needed to see her. No matter how hurt, mangled, and disrupted she could be, he needed to see her. To be there when they parted her from her beloved Hispano-Suiza for good, when she was to be taken away. He knew that all the images he had of her would be enough to overcome that last possibly terrifying picture.
He put his head between his knees. He couldn't faint now. He wouldn't forgive himself for not going and Phryne wouldn't either.
Phryne. He had rarely called her simply that. It was always 'Miss Fisher'. It was as if calling her by her given name would be like breaking a barrier they would never be able to build up back again, as it if were saved for a special occasion that was now forever impossible. Right in that moment, he acknowledged the first pang of sorrow and sadness of many to come: he had grown accustomed to how easily and joyfully she said 'Jack', a sound that could not be anything more than a memory now and which he knew he would replay in his head many and many times. Like the kiss, the one that had actually happened even if under 'safety' reasons or the one he had stupidly not given her when their moment before the football game had all but actually demanded it. He thought they would have more time, like they had had in too many occasions.
Slowly, very slowly, he raised himself, resumed a sitting position, and looked at his watch. He had to go now. Jack got himself up and calculated the steps he had to take to the coat rack to get his overcoat and his hat. No more than eight steps, he guessed. He would be able to manage that. In fact, separating every action he had to carry at that moment offered him an odd source of comfort and strength.
«Now you have to get the coat. Put your left arm in the left sleeve. Put your right arm in the right sleeve. Adjust the collar», he recited mentally as he completed each of these actions.
«Now you have to put your hat on. »
Jack continued this mental litany until he was in the car and had to stop for a moment, as if he had forgotten how to drive all of a sudden and that mantra wasn't enough anymore. He could ask Brown to drive him there, but this was something he needed to do by himself.
When he finally started the engine and was on his way to Vinson Road, he could barely do so, considering how much his brain was boiling with all the memories of Miss Fisher. Some of them were summoned even if Jack had nothing more than a vague and far away impression that those actions had actually taken place.
Right from the beginning he knew that Phryne wasn't like any other person he had ever met or was going to, but not even in his wildest dreams had he even entertained the idea of feeling anything of a romantic nature towards her. Despite the fact that he and Rosie were estranged, he was a married man after all. But the more he knew of her, the more difficult it had been to remain resistant to and unaffected by her many charms. She was pretty, of course, but more than her beauty, Jack had been taken hostage of her fast and precise-as-lightning intelligence, her disarming wit, and her fierceness and confidence. His law-abiding ways made it hard to comply with her disrespect for rules, but, at the same time, he admired her for it a great deal, the same way he appreciated her for how she was willing to live her life without anyone telling her how.
A horn coming from the delivery car behind his brought him back to the bleak and hard task he had ahead. A part of him was sure this was something he had to do but there was another that was wishing for the busy Melbourne traffic to be even busier. His rational side reminded him that it couldn't be. Jack knew once again that if he arrived too late, he would never forgive himself.
Objectively, both of them had plenty of valid reasons to not get involved, to try to ignore and refuse the feelings they knew were binding them together, whether they liked or wanted it or not. Yet, he couldn't completely shake away the sense of regret for not having acted on them nevertheless.
Vinson Road came up on his left and despite how violently those two words had been clashing against the insides of his head for the last hour, he almost missed it. He reversed for the few feet he had overdriven and as Jack turned he took one of the deepest breaths he had ever taken in his life. Considering the way Miss Fisher used to drive, it was highly probable that she was unrecognisable, that the car had hit the tree with such destructiveness that neither metal, human flesh nor bone could ever sustain that much damage and keep their shapes intact.
He could see everything now. Well, not Phryne herself but the expected trappings surrounding the car on the side of the road. Collins was taking notes. A figure covered in a white sheet appeared from within the vehicle. Phryne, he muttered.
Jack got out of his car and shut the door resolutely. Every action he had undertaken since he had been told the news led to that moment and there was no way to avoid it.
«Sir… I hope I have done the right thing calling you in.», said Constable Collins, «I know that motor vehicle accidents are not in your department but…» He meant to continue talking but Jack raised his hand, stopping him. He knew his subordinate meant well but words were not needed anymore.
«I just want to see her», his voice was a bit coarse, but came out more firm than what he had thought it could.
«She's still in the vehicle, sir.» , said Collins once the inspector reached him.
Jack walked past Hugh and contoured the back of the car. It wasn't her Hispano-Suiza but maybe she had taken the car that belonged to the friend that had called it in. The knot in his throat was tighter than ever but it wasn't enough to make him waver. Yet, once he was next to the body behind the wheel, he stopped. He knew that to see her one last time he had to peel away the white sheet that covered her, but he couldn't bring himself to do it right away. He was restless. The mix of all the emotions he had been feeling for the past hour was bubbling right under the surface, heightened by the fact that she was so close and yet had never been so far away as in that moment. He put his hand in front of his mouth and stood silent. How could he move forward with it? He took off his hat. Considering that situation, it probably should have been the first thing to do, out of respect, if not for anything else, but his mind was in such disarray it hadn't occurred to him. Not many things occurred to him beyond the fact that she was dead. Phryne Fisher was dead. He held its brim between his hands for a second. Holding back the tears which had started to form in his eyes, he took a deep breath and put the hat on top of the boot of the car. He had to follow through in that exact moment or he wouldn't be able to – he was on the verge of losing both physical strength and the courage to do it. Jack took the hem of the sheet on his fingers. It was just a bit of cloth but it felt like it weighted a ton. He started to lift it slowly, readying himself.
«Who is this?», he asked Collins, once he could see the face of the driver.
It wasn't her. The burden he had been carrying didn't vanish immediately because it gave way to confusion but it wasn't her. It wasn't her, he realized as another really deep breath left his chest.
«Gertrude Haynes…»
That voice. He would recognise it anywhere. When he turned to his right and saw her his eyes opened widely. Phryne was right there in front of them. Alive and well.
«…though she preferred Gerty.»
«Miss Fisher arrived when I was alerting the coroner, sir. She knew the deceased and requested your attendance.»
Jack was still trying to gather his bearings. How had the news that she had died begun then? What sort of misunderstandings and mishaps had taken place and fallen in so neatly he thought she was lost forever? That he had lost her forever?
«Just passing by? Were you?»
These words had come out more accusingly than what he had meant but he was so angry. If at her, at the world, at any god or fate, he couldn't tell.
«You know better than that, Jack.»
She seemed surprised with his reaction. Even at the height of his frustration with her, he had never addressed her like that.
Phryne was saying something about her adventuress club.
«Your adventuress club…»
He still wasn't able to face her and was still trying to fight the tears, which were now more of rage than of sadness.
«… for like-minded women. I'm madam president.»
«Of course you are.»
She wasn't the victim of this accident, but she could have been. He admired her courage, but it couldn't be denied that it also led her to put herself at risk, at too much risk.
She kept talking vehemently about how this wasn't an accident, how skilled of a driver Gerty Haynes was, but he couldn't pay that much attention. It seemed like his head was about to explode. He was in the side of a road and yet felt that he needed some fresh air.
«Even the Celtic queen has the odd accident.», he retorted, in reference to her comparison between the victim and Boadicea, turning his head a bit in her direction.
Phryne continued presenting her arguments as to why this wasn't a simple motorcar vehicle, but once again he couldn't make much sense of what she was saying. In order to try to calm himself, he let her talk, standing there silently, clenching and unclenching his fist.
«… a wheel doesn't simply fall off.»
«It depends on how recklessly you drive the car.»
All his attempts at controlling his emotions had been in vain.
After his outburst, they both stayed there for some instants looking at each other, but as if to brush it off – he much doubted she had missed the subtext in his words – Phryne resumed talking, this time about how if Gerty had been driving with her scarf through the door it would have gotten dirty.
In order to prove her assessment, she walked between Jack and the car. He took an unsteady step back but was able to point out that if she were driving fast the scarf would have been flying behind the driver.
«Why aren't you willing to entertain the idea of foul play?», Phryne asked at last, annoyed with how dismissive he was being.
«Why ask my opinion if you're not willing to listen to it?»
«'cause… usually that doesn't bother you!»
Jack found himself speechless. She was rather right, but normally he wasn't dealing with the fact that up to 5 minutes ago he thought she had died.
In an attempt to diffuse the awkward silence and mood that had appeared between them, he took a deep breath and tried to revert back to the professional side of him that had led her to call for him in the first place and behind which he tried to hide his feelings from her prying eyes even when they weren't working, with less and less success as of late.
«Who's her next of kin?»
«Her brother Claude.»
Jack nodded, passed by her, and took his hat from the top of the boot of the Gerty's car.
Collins seemed to want to ask him something, but before a single word could leave his mouth, Jack said simply:
«I'll be at the station. Meet me there.»
He didn't stop walking nor turned to either Collins or Miss Fisher. He wanted to leave that place behind right away.
Jack got in his car, started it and reversed it, still with the most stone-faced expression he could muster upon his face. He mustn't crumble there. Even when he was already on the way back, sheltered from inquisitive eyes by the metallic armour provided by the motorcar, he kept like this until he turned to the main road and couldn't see her in the rearview mirror anymore. Once he took that turn, he tossed the hat to the empty seat on his side, loosened his tie and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt.
He kept taking deep breaths but they were doing nothing to sooth his mood. Jack slapped himself on the forehead. How could he have placed himself in such a position? How could she have made him so vulnerable? Not even in the first months of his and Rosie's courtship he had felt like this.
It couldn't be. He couldn't let her affect him so much. It would be hard but he vowed that from that moment on, he would start to detach himself from her, no matter what it took. For starters, it wouldn't be very difficult, considering that, unlike what normally happened, he hadn't officially been called to investigate that particular death so far.
«One day, all of this will not even be a memory.», Jack lied to himself.
A/N: I hope you enjoyed this first chapter. As usual, reviews/comments will be appreciated. Now, on to reading the second one. :)