Hey. I am honestly overwhelmed with your wonderful, heartwarmingly kind and thoughtful comments. I have been hoping for you to enjoy what I write here, but feedback of this beautiful nature I could never even have dared to wish for. Thank you all so much. I love writing this story and having such a wonderful readership makes writing pure luxury.
10
Even before she fully wakes, she knows it has been a long sleep.
As she opens her eyes, she sees that the indigo blue darkness of the past night has melted, escaped and elapsed into the milky white grey of a fresh autumn day.
For a short while she simply lies there, unmoving on her back like a soldier, fallen in an unknown field, lain to rest on a stranger's bed.
And yet the greatest, the only stranger she could name is her own mind.
Her head rests comfortably on the cream-coloured cushions, facing slightly to the right side of the room.
She begins to focus on her breathing, examining it before anyone else can. It is as regular as it has been…images, feelings of the past evening slowly come back to her.
His lips on her skin where…
She tenses and her fingers follow an impulse, a quiet, sneaking fear she needs to prove meaningless.
Her cold fingertips brush the short sleeve up her shoulder and she turns her head to glance at the newly bared skin there.
It is still there, her scar. Her mind, her subconscious has not tricked her; her memories are to be trusted.
This certainty calms her at once and she eases back into the cushion, her eyes falling shut again for a moment.
A voice had been there, in her ears, in her head while she had been asleep, uttering a sentence she has heard before, but she does not seem to connect the words with an image, a place, much less an event or a point in time.
Iesu amice.
And then some more.
Ora pro ea.
"Are you awake?"
Although she has thought herself alone in the room, his voice does not startle her. She blinks.
It has been his voice. The words inside her head, the fragmented Latin imploration, voiced with urgency, fervour, like a plea – it had been his.
"Vanessa?"
She turns her head to the left and finally sees him there, only barely in the room as if hovering above the threshold, not meaning to invade the privacy of her sleep.
She has noticed how illnesses tend to water down, to mollify the boundaries between people, when nearness emerges where it otherwise might not exist.
He must think that becoming, giving her space, now that she is conscious. Back alive.
As her eyes meet his, she recognises the relief on his face and wonders whether he has thought her ill again, bereft of consciousness. Oh, how she longs to be completely alive.
She feels a faint smile play with her lips and watches him return it.
"When will you cease this?" she asks then, her voice low and still a little rough.
"What?" he asks back, slightly confused, unmoving.
He will not come closer unless she wants him to, she realises.
"Looking at me as though I were halfway gone?"
An expression trails over his gaze, a serious answer to her question, but in the next second he evades it and his tone is light as he responds.
"'m I doing that?"
Her eyes wander over his face, his features and she nods.
"Much too often still."
They look into each other's eyes for another moment, before he gives her another carefree smile and walks over to the window, drawing back the curtains.
She watches him, his calm, familiar movements.
He then insists on having Victor have a look at her first. "Before you go anywhere." She considers mild protest, but discards it.
"Your vitals are perfectly fine, Miss Ives." Plus a small, encouraging smile.
"I would advise you to take things slow for now though. We would not want to repeat last night's incident, now would we?"
She smiles at him as she watches him stand up and retrieve his equipment.
"Certainly not."
Victor is already heading towards the door, but turns back around. She can see the mischief hidden in those clear blue eyes before he even speaks again.
"Now, I would tell you to take care. But I have the slightest inkling Mister Chandler will see himself in charge."
She wants to frown at him, but immediately finds his obvious enjoyment in teasing her infectious and smirks at him instead. He feigns an impish little bow in her direction and leaves.
When Ethan walks back into the room shortly after, she considers reaching her hand out to meet his, but suppresses the impulse. There is something she longs to take care of first.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she looks up at him.
"I would like to bathe", she says then, her voice softer than she herself expected it to sound. "I", she adds then, in an even lower tone, "I want to feel clean again."
When he comes to stand in front of her and reaches for her hand then, she is even more relieved than she expected herself to be to feel his warmth on her skin, his touch. It has felt like a lifetime since the last.
"I understand", he answers then, simply and she knows he does.
Her gaze leaves his and wanders over his hand on hers and she gently turns it so she can see his palm. She finds herself tracing his heartlines.
His pulse thuds regularly beneath his skin as she does.
Ora pro ea.
She opens her mouth then, wanting to ask him – and does not.
There are images, feelings tangled up along with these Latin half-phrases that confuse her and move her and roam around within both her heart and mind and she fears all she will end up doing is confuse him as well. And worry him, which is something she has done more than enough by now, she thinks.
Later, she decides. There are so many "later"s with them, but instead of saddening her, tearing the ground away from below her feet like before, now these "later"s soothe her, excite her even.
Because now they feel like possibilities, not long lost chances.
They will no longer slip from both their fingers. She will never let that happen again and nor will he, she knows that now.
Or she hopes to know it. So fervently.
And she traces the lines on his palm and stops still in her movement and speaks again, her voice clear, her tone soft, without meeting his gaze.
"I have begun to feel like that the past evening, you know."
And she looks up and directly into his eyes again.
"Clean", she whispers.
Something seems to go through him, an emotion, a tremor of some kind and he wounds his hand from hers and touches her check, cupping it tenderly like he had done back then, when he had told her she needed to learn to protect herself.
It is an altogether different feeling now though which accompanies this gesture, she thinks she can feel his pulse tremble against her face and the complete absence of sadness in his eyes.
Her hand, now without his to explore, tumbles and catches on the fabric of his shirt.
She could pull him closer.
He searches her eyes now, his gaze bared of himself.
She feels something within her respond to what she sees there. He is so very familiar. Fragments of visions and ideas and impulses flow through her at that moment, images blending.
It puts no strain on her, costs her no strength to sustain this, yet she closes her eyes, searching within her what he had sought within her eyes mere seconds before.
And there she finds them. His words have never left her. They have been there all along, lain hidden behind all their shared hurt and her lonely pain.
Sancte Jude, apostole gloriose, semper fidelis Iesu amice, ora pro ea.
Gasping for air, she opens her eyes, finding his only after several breathless seconds.
With the silent vehemence of her reaction, he releases her from his touch on her cheek and her entire being strives against that and she gets up from where she had remained sitting.
She keeps her eyes on him as he stands still and waits for her.
He stays still, but his chest is heaving and his breathing irregular and for a second, she is sure they have thought of the same moment.
Their eyes meet again. A faint smile on her lips and she swallows, unwilling to cry.
"Clean", she whispers once more and the expression in his eyes reflects hers and he stays still, solid and safe as she crosses their distance and leans against him, her frame flush against his chest, her ear on his heart and his breath on her hair.
His arms don't surround her just yet. He gives her space.
She wants him to keep pulling her in. Drawing her in, closer.
Simultaneously she knows there is nothing closer than what they are.
Her scar does not ache brushing against his chest.
It calms both of them, although she feels something within her overflown.
"I'll go run the bath", he says then. His voice seems to come from inside her mind or even her veins, so familiar, as though swimming in her bloodstream.
There is no touch he could release her from as they move apart without reluctance. It will not be the last time.
Their shared, uncommunicated certainty of this makes her feel lightheaded and for a moment, she has forgotten where and what they are.
As he leaves the room, she takes a deep breath to steady herself. But when she is sure her feet touch the floor again, it is still there.
The weightlessness.
She goes into one of the spacious bathrooms alone. Advised to call if anything is amiss or she starts to feel ill again.
On her request, Ethan has taken two of her towels and several pieces of her clothing attire from the drawers in her old room and brought them into the bathroom in advance.
She wants to avoid alerting any of the men for anything less than life-threatening.
She locks the door.
Slowly slips out of the nightdress and discards it. It lands somewhere on the floor and with that, her last remaining physical connection to the past three weeks.
She does not take the time to observe her bare frame in the long mirror nor does she avoid it.
All she recognises in a futile glance is how thin she has become.
Her pale hipbones and her ribcage stand out even more than usual and her knees seem so close to the skin.
The hollows between her upper and lower arms are blue from all the times needles have entered them. The good doctor must have felt like he was in a knitting course by the end of it, she thinks.
It takes her some effort to sink into the water.
She has never been too fond of water in general.
Swimming is alright, when needed. But of diving she has always been afraid.
Losing touch to the surface, to anything permanent, anything solid, anything that would not fade or fall away seems to her too similar to losing oneself for her to actually enjoy it.
So it takes her some effort to sink into the water and she takes a sharp breath as the water touches her skin.
It is hotter than she has expected it to be and she needs several seconds to adjust to it, half considering getting right back out of it.
But she takes another deep breath and focuses on what she wants. Becoming clean.
This bathroom is the only one of those in Grandage Place she is able to sustain being in for more than ten minutes. Because it is the only bathroom that is not completely white.
There are patterns on the tiles, fading floral patterns in deep, dark colours, the colours of nightmares, forest green and blood red and blackish blue. Nothing she would choose to surround herself with, but still much more bearable for her than the sight of sterile white.
She realises how tense she still is and tries to relax, letting herself slide lower into the tub, deeper into the hot water.
She is suddenly uncomfortable with her nakedness, not having seen herself like this for such a long time and for a while, she avoids looking below the water's surface.
This notion confirms her of the need for this to be done – the need to spend time alone with herself. The need to become clean.
She leans her head against the brink of the tub and closes her eyes. Some of her tension vanishes.
When she is done bathing, she shaves, slowly, cautiously, only thoroughly enough to feel clean. There is not even blood.
She washes her hair then, deeply inhaling the soft scent of her shampoo.
Half of her heart wants to hate herself for the indulgence; the other half of her longs to be clean, so much so that it outweighs her self-reproach before it can influence her actions.
She puts her half-dried hair up in a loose chignon, with a couple of strands already falling back out of it before she is finished.
Her hands do not tremble anymore, although by the end of it all she feels shaky on her feet.
She dresses, with quicker hands now, putting on undergarments – no corset – and a long-sleeved dress in a faded, blueish grey which instantly reminds her of that little bit of autumn sky she has spotted through the window.
She had told Ethan to take anything but black.
He had looked at her. Smiled even, softly. And nodded.
She is not sure she can bear the colour black on her skin anymore. And it seems unworthy to her, after what he had done for her. It would be as though nothing had happened. When in reality, so much had.
Leaving the bathroom feels too much like reentering the world.
She longs to hear his voice after all this reclusiveness.
Naturally, she looks for him in his/her/the room.
When he is not there, she remains calm.
She goes to the kitchen next.
Then the parlour. Sir Malcolm compliments her on her appearance; she does not listen.
"The good doctor has some business to attend at Bedlam hospital. He mentioned a colleague in need of his assistance, a certain…Was it doctor Jekyll? I am quite sure it was. He asked and I told him it was alright for him to go since you had fared so much better today…Vanessa?"
She is already out of the room and back in the corridor, her steps quicker now, she passes half-open doors, catching a glance into them, searching and not finding him.
She tries fervently not to think back to her dream, the nightmare about not finding him. He would not leave her. Not again. She knows it.
Up the stairs, she hesitates at the top of the staircase. Slowly moves closer towards the end of the corridor.
The room she fears. The room that used to be hers.
She swallows, approaching the entrance.
Her first instinct is to cross herself and her hand hovers there, numbly, above her breast.
"Vanessa?"
Relief washes over her and she turns around to find him standing where she had been, at the top of the staircase leading back down.
He seems to see it in her eyes and when she approaches him, slowly, her knees trembling, his hand is stretched out in her direction and it reminds her of another time he had awaited her like that at the bottom of a staircase.
"Let's get back downstairs."
She nods and they linger for another moment, their hands conjoined.
"You look good", he says then and she can't help her smile.
"You chose well" she replies and her voice sounds tender with it.
He chuckles softly as they descend the stairs.
"Happy coincidence. Or beginner's luck."
"Don't underestimate your abilities, Mister Chandler."
"I'd never."
He is so close that his amused voice seems to rumble through her. She looks at him from the side.
"Not true", she replies then, simply, but she means to say so much.
His gaze meets hers and they both almost trip over the lowest step.
Shortly after that, she stands with her back to him, looking out the window, curtains drawn to the side the way he had done it when he had woken her up.
The cobblestoned, grand place outside is almost empty, hardly any passengers.
"You have been in my room."
She doesn't ask this for she knows it. She wants to ask something else and he comprehends at once.
"Yes", he replies, probing.
She waits for him to ask her. There is no way he could have entered her room and not have seen it.
"Your cross", he finally utters, lowly and she draws a sharp breath of relief for him having understood and hurt for what the question is about, "It's missing."
She nods slowly, still facing the window.
"Did you take it down?" he asks and his voice is hoarse and low as he speaks.
She nods once again, not bearing to look into his eyes.
"No", he whispers and his tone is so soft and she hears so much pain in it that she feels like it breaks her heart once more. He is hurt for her sake.
She presses her eyes shut and feels the tears behind them rising again.
"Could I put it back?"
His question is tentative and barely audible as though he already knows what she is going to answer.
She shakes her head with fervour and bites her lip and hears him stand up from the chair he has been seated on.
She takes a deep breath when she feels him standing right behind her and keeps her eyes shut.
"I have done the most horrible thing. With it. I…"
She pauses and opens her eyes.
It hurts her almost physically, remembering what she had done that terrible morning when she had found them all to be gone. When each and every one of them had left her to be on her own. Even Him.
"He will understand", she hears him say, his voice firm and clear and full of conviction.
His hands are on his shoulders as she turns around to look up at him. What she sees in his familiar eyes is something she had not expected.
"Why does it hurt you this much?" she hears herself whisper, taken aback by how much emotion she sees on his features.
"Because I know how much it means to you", he replies quietly.
"And because I know it is my fault you lost your faith in Him. Your faith was the one constant in your life giving you strength and I took it from you when I left, didn't I?"
"Ethan", she interjects, her hands on his shoulders as well now.
There is so much she wants to say. She wants to tell him his disappearance from her life had not been the reason why she had fallen from faith. But she realises instantly that she would have lied to both him and herself by voicing any such statement.
Instead the one question that has been burning on her mind ever since that fateful day, breaks out of her.
"Do you think He can forgive me?"
His eyes wander over her face, but there is no hesitation.
"Yes. He will."
Her relief at his conviction, his sheer belief in her ability, the possibility of her being absolved, redeemed, shakes her. He takes her into his arms and she wants to hope, so fervently, that he is right.
After some time, she pulls away, gently and looks back up into his eyes.
"Sancte Jude, apostole gloriose, semper fidelis Iesu amice, ora pro ea."
She has whispered the sentence and smiles by the end of it.
"This is what you exorcised me with, is it not?"
She sees him swallow, a mixture of emotions trailing over his face, until he smiles in astonishment.
"Yes. Yes, it was. How did you…?"
She smiles once more.
"The words simply came to me. When I woke up this morning, they were suddenly present within my mind. I feel like they have always been there, waiting."
"Waiting for what?" he asks softly.
She moves her hand up to trace his forehead, along his temple and down to his jaw. He lays her hand on his heart, before she answers.
"For the moment they would no longer hurt me, but strengthen me. The moment you would be there. In your presence, they don't hurt."
He shakes his head in half-amused, half-astonished disbelief and his gaze wanders over her and back into her eyes once more.
"I never thought it would work", he utters, his voice so low she barely understands and still, she does.
"Yes", she whispers, "Yes, you did."
He draws her closer once more and she does not know how much time they spend simply standing there in this embrace, when they both hear the front door falling shut, only a silent thud from where they are, but still.
She is the first to move back, if gently, but Ethan catches her hand before she can turn around.
She looks up into his eyes again.
"He will", he repeats, his voice hoarse from not having spoken for a long while.
She hesitates, bites her lip. A few more seconds pass before she finally nods. He leaves the room after her, following slowly.
"Miss Ives", Victor notes with visible joy as she enters the dining room. She is surprised to find dusk already falling beyond the windows. She smiles at him in response.
"You look much better, much more…" he seems to search for the right words to convey his meaning, "like yourself", he finishes and smiles again.
"Yet at the same time you do not. Is that actually light blue you are wearing?"
She grimaces at him as they both take their seats at the table. Sir Malcolm has once more offered to see to the cooking, something she still feels like she needs to get used to.
"It's grey", she objects strictly, unsuccessfully trying to hide her mirth.
"In any case", Victor answers, rearranging the silverware to meet his own standards of table setting, "it is not something I imagined you to even have in your wardrobe."
"I thought we'd start off slowly. Wait until you see the bright yellow", Ethan's voice comes from somewhere behind her, the tone of it thick with amusement.
She shakes her head incredulously, but a small laughter escapes her lips. Ethan sits down in the chair next to her again.
"You are impossible. Both of you."
It is made worse when the two men grin at each other across the table and she shakes her head once more, pouring herself a glass of water.
"I'm joking obviously", Ethan says, almost apologetically, "There's no yellow".
"Shame", Victor replies, laying it on thick with the disappointment. "I would have liked to see that."
"What spectacle am I missing out on here?"
Sir Malcolm has entered the room with a pot in his hands, smoke softly circling upwards from it and Ethan quickly gets up to help him.
They entertain only a light conversation at dinner; to all their questioning, Victor only briefs mentions this colleague of his whose methods he does not quite understand. Sir Malcolm gives a quick recount of the Explorer's Society meeting that had taken place the night before and she…
She simply listens and lets her eyes wander over all of them and eats properly for the first time in three weeks and thoroughly suppresses the ever resurging impulse to lay her hand on Ethan's thigh or his hand or his shoulder or his back or that of his chair even…
"What about you, Vanessa, would you like to go there?"
The unexpected question in her direction shakes her from her momentary haze and she swallows and looks up into Sir Malcolm's inquisitive gaze.
"I'm sorry, I did not…"
"We were just saying there's an orchestra performing on several nights this week", Ethan begins to explain, when Victor interjects with vehemence.
"It is not "an" orchestra. That would be like calling Tennyson "a writer". It's the Bohemian orchestra. Masters of their trade."
"Whatever it is they are, there is a performance tonight and I was just mentioning that I would like to go there and I asked if anyone feels the overwhelming desire to accompany me", Sir Malcolm explains, smiling whimsically by the end of it.
She exhales, cutting the last potato on her plate in half.
"I'm sorry, I am…having trouble concentrating."
At once, Victor glances over at her and she can see by the look in his eyes that he sees the patient in her again.
"Then you had better stay here, Miss Ives. After all, this is the first day you", he pauses, "are back. To normal I dare not say since that is what we all are certainly not."
This dry observation earns him a smirk from everyone at the table and after dinner, they all part ways for the evening.
She watches him strike the fire in his/her/the room. The first flames exude a soft glow as they begin to bite at the wood that seems so dark and lifeless against the vibrant spark of the first fires.
It takes him longer than she had thought to get the fire to continue burning without his assistance and she does not want to hover behind his back, waiting, so she sits down at the edge of the bed. Her fingers tug at the sleeves of her dress.
If she truly goes through with her wish, her need to not wear black anymore, there would not be much else for her to wear. She had scowled playfully at the men's delight in her limited array of clothing colours, but they had had a point in what they had noted.
It is a random thought, but she suddenly thinks of how the colour had been brought back into her life.
It had been missing from it for almost a decade, ever since that fateful night before Mina's wedding.
All at once, after all this time, there appears the possibility to wear beige again, light grey, soft violet – white even.
It is him, she thinks. He has brought the colour back into her world.
She hears him mutter something under his breath, something sinister directed at the lump of wood that will not spark fire and her gaze wanders over his face, his features, tense in concentration as he peers into the beginning fire.
When the stubborn piece of wood finally surrenders, he lets out a low sound, triumphantly and at last looks over to where she is sitting only to find her watching him. His cheerful grin turns into a more questioning smile, softer now, asking her…what?
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
She returns his smile, albeit faintly.
"How?" she asks back.
He gets up from where he was kneeling by the fireplace and as he stands up, she has to look up at him to see directly into his eyes.
He approaches her, slowly.
"As though I were halfway gone?"
Her breath catches as she realises he has rephrased what she had asked him this morning.
She can only keep her gaze buried in his as he sits down on the edge of the bed next to her and gently reaches for her hand, laying it lightly onto his, their palms barely touching.
"I'm afraid", she finally admits, looking down on both their hands, the words tumbling from her lips with her voice quavering.
He does not move.
"I know. I've noticed."
She looks back up into his eyes, unsure.
"Ask me", he says lowly then and she wraps her fingers around his hand. He is the one beacon, ever there and ever glowing, in the darkness that has surrounded her for so long.
She takes a deep breath before she speaks, her voice stronger now, but still too soft in her own ears.
"I told you that I want…that before…I want to be clean."
He nods and all she sees on his face is earnest understanding. He does understand it, her, after all.
She exhales and asks it.
"Would you pray with me?"
He does not hesitate.
She kneels down on the wooden floor and he follows her.
And they pray the Lord's Prayer together, in English and Latin, three times.
And at last, she feels clean.