Half in Agony, Half in Hope

"Phryne, are you sure you're alright? You are being very quiet tonight, I've never seen you so reserved when I've asked you for help on a case. I could really use your help in figuring out how they managed to crack this particular safe… its supposed to be impossible. I just feel like you aren't even listening to me."

"What? Oh, I'm sorry Jack, I guess I am a bit distracted. What was it that happened? They managed to break into a Diebold?" She was sitting in her parlour, on her favorite spot in the bay window, staring outside, her knees folded up to chest and she was fiddling with her necklace, something she rarely did. Usually Phryne Fisher could focus on four things at one time, and today she was seemingly unable to focus on one.

"Phryne, this is the third time I've told you the details! Seriously, can you please tell me what is going on? You're starting to really worry me." He was sitting in the chair right next to her now, he pulled her hand away from her necklace and was looking into her eyes with more than just a little concern showing through in his eyes. He lowered his voice, not because there were people around who he didn't want to overhear, but because he was trying to comfort her and coax her into talking to him.

She met his gaze for a moment only, she looked away as quickly as she could, but in that moment he saw fear in her eyes, fear and confusion. Now his heart was starting to beat considerably faster, trying to think to anything that might be upsetting her or worrying her like this. He didn't think she had heard bad news from home, or from Jane's school; her father had been blessedly quiet for the last six months, he and Phryne's mother had decided to take some time to go visit America, see the sights there, and to his knowledge it had been incident free. Had he forgotten something? Her birthday wasn't for another two months, and since it was right around Christmas, he knew that he hadn't forgotten a holiday.

"Jack, I don't know how to talk about this, I really don't. I know that I need to talk about it, that I can't make any decisions on my own, but I just don't honestly know how you're going to feel- hell, I don't even know how I feel; and I'm not used to not knowing my own mind or heart and I'm so scared that when I tell you it's just going to ruin everything between us that we love so much! Dammit all!" Was she crying?

There was absolutely no humor or joy in his voice at this point, not even exasperation, it was only terror that something was horribly wrong…

"Phryne, please! You have to tell me what is going on right now before I have a heart attack or a stroke! You have me seriously terrified at the moment, I have no idea what is wrong and I'm scared! You should know that you can tell me absolutely anything. Is it me? Are you… are you unhappy? You aren't trying to… I mean, I thought we are very much in love and you were I been neglectful or unkind in anyway? Are you dissatisfied with our relationship?" Phryne gulped, feeling rotten she could give him the idea that this was in any way a problem with him!

"Oh Jack! No, it's not that at all! But I'm worried that when I tell you…"

"For the love of God, Woman, please fucking tell me what's going on!"

"I may be pregnant."

He looked at her. His mouth hanging open and his eyes weren't blinking. In fact, he wasn't moving a single muscle; it was as though her words had completely frozen him in time, instantly. He felt like he had been hit by a wall of bricks, this was so out of left field he didn't even know how to possibly process it. He just sat there, staring, unblinking, trying to wrap his head around her announcement. After what felt to Phryne like an eternity, he cleared his throat, licking his lips and tried to speak.

"You might be? Forgive me, but what, exactly,do you mean by that? Have you been to a doctor?" She nodded.

"Today. I went to see Mac. I haven't had my courses in about 6 weeks and I was feeling a bit nauseous the last few days, so, when I looked at my calendar and realized how long it had been… I mean, sometimes I miss a month here or there, it never worried me in the past, but then… I don't know, I got a bit suspicious and I called Mac and she is performing the test, so I'll know in two days whether the rabbit lives or not."

Jack nodded, as stoically as possible right really wasn't entirely sure what the testing process was like, he'd never had to deal with it in the past. He had generally understood that a rabbit was usually involved and if the rabbit died, she was with child. He hadn't given it too much thought, he assumed that women just "knew", wasn't it supposed to be some kind of instinct that soon-to-be mothers had?

His mind was spinning. He knew he had to think before he spoke, he needed to tread very carefully here, but he wasn't at all sure how to proceed. He gulped, hard and uncomfortably.

"Do you… do you know what you want to do if you are?" That was one of the most difficult questions he had ever uttered in his life. He was trying very hard to not get pushy or excited or upset until she told him what she wanted- he was trying to not feel anything at all yet. She was a modern woman, he had always understood this to be a "modern" relationship, although at some points he hadn't exactly known what that meant. He knew that she engaged in the use of family planning devices that were reasonably effective, something along the lines of 85% and he would sometimes use other methods or devices himself… although neither of them enjoyed the alternatives nearly as much, but they had ALWAYS taken precautions, always.

"I don't know." Phryne's voice was very quiet, she looked so lost right now, it was nothing like her usual demeanor. "I suppose, I always assumed in the past that if I did ever get pregnant, I would simply find a discreet doctor to help me terminate." That was, more or less, what Jack had suspected, but it still made something in him sink to the pit of his stomach and he had to gulp down a bit of air when he heard it- it was a bit like being punched in the gut, he had tried to be prepared for that possibility from the first time he went to bed with her. "But..."

But? He looked up, trying to read her face.

"But, I think that if I was CERTAIN that is what I wanted to do right now, well, I'm not sure I would have told you. At least, not like this, not right now. I don't think I'd feel so confused or scared if I KNEW that was what I wanted. I just… I don't know. I honestly can't imagine what would happen if I did that and you hated me and could never speak to me again- that would very possibly kill me. But I also can't imagine how you would feel at the idea of being trapped by this… baby." It was the first time she had actually uttered the word. In her head, she had referred to it as a "situation" or "fetus" or even "pregnancy"... but this was the first time she was giving it any personification through the label of "baby". She continued on, absolutely terrified.

"Because you know, no matter what I decide, you don't have to be trapped, you aren't stuck with me, or with the child- I never want you to feel that way. If I chose to keep this child you wouldn't owe me anything, or the child anything, it would be your choice entirely.".

"Are you absolutely insane, Woman?" He was having trouble NOT grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her, he was trying so hard to not yell and scream at her. Good God was she a stubborn and exasperating creature.

That made her stop in her tracks.

"Jack?" Wasn't she being so thoughtful and generous to let him know that just as he was allowing her the space to determine what she would do with her own body, what he did with his heart was still his decision alone. She continued, "Well, of course it would be ideal if you wanted to be involved in the child's life, should I choose to have it. But I also understand what it could mean for you personally, or even professionally, if you were known to have a bastard child and some Little Bit' on the side. I understand how incredibly difficult that could be for you- just as I understand that simply trying to cover up a child through some sort of rushed, shotgun wedding (as I believe they say in America) is not a particularly appealing course of action to either of us. Just none of this is what I was expecting, and I know that when I chose to… engage in certain behaviors with you, this was of course always a possibility. But I just never thought that I would feel so… I don't know. And of course this is not particularly fair to you at all, sitting there, waiting for me to make up my mind and being forced to simply deal with whatever decision I make, and I somehow feel like either way I decide could actually just ruin everything wonderful between us and how happy I have been these last six months with you!"

This was maybe the most insane speech she had made during the entirety of their was clueless as to how to feel or what to say next in this situation! He had known for quite sometime now that Phryne Fisher was likely to be the death of him, whether it be from her questionable actions in their investigations, or her sense of justice, fairness, honesty and love of adventure- things that almost gave him heart attacks on a daily basis- only magnified since they had become involved. So, without knowing what else to do in this situation, he simply grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her to him as forcefully as he could. His mouth was on hers, his tongue pushing her mouth open, fighting against hers, his hands roaming up and down her sides, trying to remind her, without any words, how much she meant to him, how vital she was to his life and happiness and how he wished for nothing in the world so much as her happiness. His hands were in her hair now, he was stroking her head, her face, and when he finally came up for air, he could see that her bottom lip was particularly swollen from his efforts- he must have a significant amount of smeared lipstick on his own face, but that was just fine with him.

"In what universe or parallel reality do you think I ever would or even COULD feel stuck here? With you? With OUR child? Phryne, we have been together quite some time at this point! Do you think that there has ever been a moment that I have been with you and not counted myself as the luckiest bastard to ever live on this earth? Do you think I would feel any less that way if you actually told me that there was going to be a miniature Phryne Fisher running around at my feet, calling me Da? I don't want to push you, I will not push you, but this isn't a decision I can make for you." He breathed in deeply, not knowing exactly what to say, but he had to get this much more difficult part out before he lost his nerve.

"I DON'T know how I would feel if you told me you were going to end a pregnancy. If you chose to do that, I honestly don't know WHAT I would feel. But I know, absolutely, that you can't do this only for me. I'm positive of that fact- taking either action only to make me happy or keep me "free", as though I think of myself that way right now." She looked like she was actually going to pick a fight over him saying that last part, but he put his hand over her mouth, needing to finish with what he had to say. "Yes, I always expected to have children. That didn't work out with Rosie, and I met you and I stopped worrying about anything other than the happiness I experience, the incredible joy that comes from being with you, and I know that I could not love you nearly as much if you were ever to deny who you are. Whatever that may mean for us, right now, I want you to think about you- The Honorable Miss Phryne Fisher. What do you want?"

What she wanted was to go back in time and avoid this situation entirely. Although, no, wait, that wasn't true… there wasn't a single time they had been together that she would take back. Nor did she imagine this would really encourage celibacy moving forward- resisting Jack's touch and embrace did not actually seem like honestly viable or realistic choices.

"Phryne, can I ask… its a rather personal question, I know, but…"

"I think that between what we did in Aunt P's garden last week and this particular conversation, we are mostly beyond such considerations, Jack." Jack did have to blush at the memory of him and Phryne sneaking off at Mrs. Stanley's Garden Party, from what he had heard since, some kind of pack of larger dogs was being blamed for the trampled roses in the south garden.

"Have you ever- I mean, have you never, in the past, procured a… a discrete doctor before?" She knew that was probably a perfectly fair question to be asked, and she supposed it was understandable that he thought maybe she had been in this situation before. But right now, she had enough on her mind that she was trying to sort through and she had dropped a pretty massive bomb on Jack in the last twenty minutes… she didn't know if she had the emotional fortitude to continue down that particular rabbit hole with him, not at the moment.

"For your information, no, I have never needed the service before." She looked up at him and realized she had not answered that question well, she had been too specific. He was something of a bloodhound when he got on the scent and he wasn't going to let this go. Damn, why did he have to be so naturally adept at detection?

"I can't tell you what to do. I mean, neither of us has ever been pregnant, it seems wrong for me to judge you or dictate your actions regarding your body. Neither of us have any idea what it would be like, do we? It could be so incredibly awful and painful and dangerous, couldn't it?" He was being sincere, she knew he would genuinely be concerned about her health and well being… but he was still interrogating her, she knew when she was being she have to go into this now? Really?

Phryne lowered her eyes, not able to meet his gaze, she still looked terrified, but this wasn't the same as her anxiety in telling him about her situation… possible situation. This was true fear. The detective in Jack felt something prickle at the back of his brain.

"Phryne?"

"That's not entirely accurate, Jack." Jack thought he could feel himself turning green, he felt sick to his stomach and a little bit as though he was going pass out. While he had worked hard to come to terms with how many men there may have been in her past, he was not at all prepared to hear that one of them had actually fathered a child with her. And what exactly, had she chosen to do about it? It was possible that was the most difficult part for him to think about! He looked at her and could see her eyes were watery, her lips trembling. She took a deep breath, this was probably the last part of herself she had not shared with Jack (in fact, almost no one had ever been privy to this story, other than Mac or Madame Sarcelle). That fact had to change- if the two of them were going to go forward in any way, Jack had to know the truth- the full truth.

"I'm not actually sure I can hear this right now, Phryne." The pain in his voice, both anticipated AND realized, was unmistakable.

"No, Jack. Look, I don't want to think about this or talk about this at all- maybe even less than you want to! But I think its time I finally told you, that I finally talk about it with someone." She stood up to pour herself a glass of whiskey, and taking pity on the look on Jack's face, poured him a generous one as well. She returned to the chaise to sit next to him, handing him his glass, finally ready to talk; well, as ready as she was ever likely to be.

"I was pregnant, once. It was not planned- not even close. Unfortunately, the man I was with didn't always-" Was there a delicate way to say this? "He did not always give me a choice in the matter of whether or not we would… Obviously this made any precautions I could take beforehand irrelevant." She was clearly uncomfortable, he felt truly terrible now that he had pushed, especially as he was starting to get a horrible premonition of the kind of story she was about to tell him. She was sipping her whiskey, he found himself throwing back half the glass like a shot, this was going to be incredibly difficult to hear, and now he couldn't believe he was making her tell it.

"You are a brilliant detective, Jack, I'm sure you have put together some of the pieces already about my past with Monsieur DuBois, you've most likely pieced together what that relationship was like. I don't know that I will ever really understand why I allowed him to treat me that way… Perhaps it was from how I'd seen my father and mother growing up; maybe it was guilt from being left alive when Janey wasn't, when so many of the boys I grew up with had died on the battlefields of France and Italy." Her voice trailed off, she was thinking, looking out the window, but not truly focusing on anything in her eyeline.

"But, I have no real explanation, it doesn't even make sense to me, looking back, it seems like a completely different person, not me at all. I do remember that he was paintings, when he chose to paint, rather than spending all of his time drinking absinthe, were incredibly modern and post-impressionist with a degree of emotion and sensuality that was beyond genius. But he was jealous, a possessive egomaniac. If I even looked at another man or complimented another artist, he would fly off the handle and beat me; sometimes with his bare hands, sometimes with his belt…" Jack was sure that he would be sick all over the room. His knuckles were a ghostly white as, with one hand he gripped the arm of the chair he was in, while downing the rest of the whiskey in his other. Phryne had been right, he did not want to hear this; but he was trying to trust that there was a reason that she needed to tell him.

"Twice he tried to strangle me with his hands. The last time it happened was the last time he ever touched me, in any way at all. Only a few days earlier I had begun to suspect that I was pregnant. As absolutely mad as it sounds now, at the time I still believed so honestly that this was love, I found the idea of giving up his baby to be unthinkable. But that night, we were out in Pigalle, at a bar we frequently met other artists and would talk and dance and smoke and drink, all together. I ran into someone I had served with in my ambulance unit, a man from the Ukraine. We spoke, briefly, in Russian, and Rene became convinced that we were brazenly sharing words of undying love and devotion with each other, in a language he did not understand. He had been drinking all day and was angry. When we returned to our flat he began yelling; I tried desperately to brace myself for the inevitable attack and it was particularly violent and rough attack." She was starting to speak more quietly, still unable to look Jack in the eye; she found herself having to focus on the knot in the tree trunk in her yard that she could see from her seat, looking out the parlour window. She finished her whiskey and stood to pour herself another.

"I kept telling Rene that he was wrong- we had actually been speaking about the comrade's wife and two lovely children back home. He simply wouldn't believe me. That night he was more brutal than he had ever been. He beat me with his belt, and then, with his bare hands he tried to strangle me until I passed out." Her hands were gently tracing the imaginary scars from his hands along her throat. "And then he… while I was passed out he…" She couldn't finish what she was saying. She felt her body go rigid and tight, shaking as she remembered how it had felt, lying there in the flat, on the rough, bare wood floor, her clothes having been mostly ripped off her body, her skin exposed in the filthy, cold and damp room. She woke the next morning and was so cold; she was black and blue all over, her throat in agonizing pain when she tried to swallow or speak.

As she pulled herself up to sit, she looked around the room to see the mess that had been created the evening before. Furniture was tipped over, broken glass was on the floor, and Rene was gone. Pulling her knees into her chest, bruised but scratched and mostly naked, she looked around her. If she was pregnant, how could she possibly allow a child to be raised anywhere near this man? Her father had been a violently abusive drunk, sure, but he was a fluffy kitten compared to Rene. Suddenly, she had no thought of anything but the possibility of this unborn child, and that was when she knew she had to move quickly. Returning to her conversation with Jack, she continued.

"In that moment, that one moment the next morning, I knew that if I was actually pregnant, I could never expose that child to this man. I packed up the few things I owned, took the few franks we had in the apartment- he never liked to leave me with much money. Then, I spent the next three days trying to get out of France and soon found my way to London, and to Mac. But by the time I got to her, I had already begun to… I had lost the baby." At this point, tears flowed freely down her cheeks.

But this was not the story that Jack had been expecting. He looked up at her, while she looked as though she was in a trance, almost as if she was hypnotized and experiencing it all over again. Every ugly moment, every single time that man had touched her, every drop of blood from the miscarriage, it was as though he could see it in front of him. He tasted salt and realized that he was crying as well, quietly, for everything she had been through. Then, no longer finding a light cry to be helpful, she began sobbing. Unable to control herself, she was doubled over, shuddering from the powerful, racking cries, trying to fight for air between sobs. Jack dropped his empty glass and it landed on the thick carpeted floor as he moved to hold her.

Sometimes she made it easy to forget how much she had been through in her life. Her childhood had been anything but carefree and happy. Between her abusive father, her extreme poverty in the worst slums of Collingwood, the tension in her parents' marriage, and then the disappearance of her sister Janey, she had been through more in the first 10 years of her life than most people ever experience in 100. Then it was the war where she fought death as a nurse, watching thousands of young men snuffed out in the prime of their lives. And, somehow, she had convinced herself that love was cruel; love was domineering and demanding; being commanded and beaten were actually proof of sincere affection. Was it any wonder that she had closed herself off from experiencing love, true love, again for such a very long time?

Jack pulled her to him, he held her as tightly as he could. He wanted so badly to find a way to rescue her, to go back into her past and fix all of those terrible wrongs and abuses. He wanted to show her that she was the most unbelievably warm, fearless and loving woman who had ever been on this planet and that she had improved the lives of practically everyone she had met since that worthless excuse of a man had received his due. But they both sat there, silently throughout the next hour; both of them devastated and wishing that they could change the past, neither knowing what the future held, but somehow feeling comforted that at least neither would be facing it alone.