Bells of Whitechapel
Spoilers: minimal. Sanctuary for all, that's probably it, definitely nothing after season 1.
Set: Two days after Druitt's 8th murder (the one Magnus tried to avert)
Genre: Angst
Rating: K+
This was written for the Magnitt February challenge, and is now a standalone tableaux piece. It is a first for me, not only in that it's a challenge entry, but that it's written in third person omniscient rather than immediate. Thanks to the website casebook (dot) org. It's a fantastic resource on the ripper murders of 1888, that being the main 5, plus quite a few others (many of which contradict cannon) sometimes attributed to Jack The Ripper, or John Druitt, as we call him.
Enjoy
A long, low note, sonorous, emotionless, rang out over the crowded hovels, the filth, to die in the smog.
A young man paused for a moment, then pulled hard on the rope once more, with a half-voiced curse, sounding the knell again, as the priest's final words reached the side of the church.
"... commit her body to the ground." These words were followed by the sound of a spade in the damp earth, reaching the ears of the woman, who stood silent, unseen, by the side of the church, listening, watching. She was tall, fair haired, might even have been beautiful. But she was as pale as the woman in the coffin, eyes rimmed red from crying, her breaths shook, faltered, occasionally resolving into soft, dry, desperate sobs.
She'd no tears left to cry. Her body had no more to give. Blood had not come forth when it should have and her retches that morning had yielded only bile; she'd not eaten in two days, since the woman in the coffin had ceased to breathe.
The small, bedraggled troop of mourners dispersed. The tall woman remained, mourning silently, mourning not the woman who lay beneath the ground, but instead mourning her murderer. She, Helen Magnus had murdered him, and he'd murdered her in turn. There could be no escape, she'd nowhere left to run, for her own sake or for the sake of the legacy he had left within her. She was alone, truly alone, and afraid.
With nowhere to flee, nowhere to hide and no destination in mind, Helen Magnus turned and left, fading into the grey haze.