It was Friday night in Whitechapel and ale was flowing freely. Ed had been in London for a few months now, and he still marvelled at it. With the Rooks footing the bill, he could eat and drink his fill without a second thought. It was a far cry from the hunger of Swindon.

Three-fingered Bill was halfway through a hilarious story involving his first wife when there was a bang, followed by some yelling, and silence rippled out through the pub.

Ed craned his neck around and saw Mad Mike- a Rook Lieutenant- shaking a man by the collar. "My eight quid, man," Mike was yelling through ragged breaths. "Give me my eight pounds."

He looked crazed. Mike's hair was standing up at strange angles and his clothes were ripped in places. His hands were quivering even as they fisted in the other man's shirt.

"Goddamnit it, Mikey" the other man choked back. "I don't have that kind of brass just on me, mate, what the hell's gotten into you-"

Mike suddenly punched the other man without warning, knocking him down to the ground. The pub collectively held its breath. "I leant you that money," Mike spat, his voice now ragged. "I need it back now."

"What the fuck," one of the other men breathed, leaning down to check on his now-passed out friend. "Why in the fuck do you need it so badly?"

"Gotta get out of town," Mike shuddered, looking around with wild eyes. "Gotta leave now."

"What?" another voice called out. Ed recognized one of the other Lieutenants, a fellow who was even rumoured to speak with Jack directly. "You can't go, Mike, are you off your fucking head? You don't just leave the Rooks."

Mike was starting to look like a cornered animal. "Got to go or she'll kill me," he said, choking on the words. "She's going to kill us all, I tell you, every last one of us."

Ed felt a chill run down the back of his neck.

The other Lieutenant forced a laugh. "Who, Mike? Look, you've just had a bit too much to drink-"

"The Frye woman!" Mad Mike almost shrieked. "You're all sitting here but you don't know, she's going to kill us all, I have to leave, I don't want to die-"

"Mikey, Mikey," the bartender approached, his arms up. This all was bad for business. "You're going to be fine, come on-"

Mike was still raving. "I saw her, I was at Lady O's, Lady O is dead, they're all dead- I saw her, she had eyes like the devil and she took out a dozen men as I watched, we didn't stand a chance and she didn't even break a sweat, I'm only alive because I was hiding and even then she saw me, shelooked right at me, and I'm only alive because I wasn't worth the trouble of killing."

He broke off and took shaky deep breaths as the pub sat in stunned silence, unsure about what to do next.

"I'm sorry," Mike rasped as he pulled out his gun and cocked it. Every man tensed, their hands going for their belts. "Give me your money, quick, now, I've got to get out of town, I've got to leave-"

There was a sudden crack and Mad Mike slowly toppled forward. Bill stood behind him, holding the bottle that he had just knocked against the back of Mike's head.

"Nutty bastard," Bill muttered. "What the hell was that all about?"

There was awkward laughter and chatter gently resumed in the pub, everyone trying to ease past what had just happened. But Ed sat silently, his throat tight. He knew Mad Mike. Mad Mike was from Swindon, just like Ed was, and Ed had only come to London because he knew Mike would give him a place.

Back in Swindon, Ed once watched Mad Mike charge into a row of stampeding horses for a bet. He fought off the local sheriff like it was nothing. He was brave, and he was strong. And despite the moniker, he was eminently sane; the name referred to his legendary temper, not his soundness of mind.

Looking at Mad Mike on the ground, Ed wondered if it maybe wouldn't be a good idea to go visit his Mother for a bit. He had enough saved for a train fare back. Yes, maybe… Maybe he would go north, just for a little while. It had nothing to do with what just happened. He was just being a good son, he told himself.

He left that night.

When Evie travelled from India to London, it was with a knot in her stomach.

It was partly fear about what she would find, of course, and Jacob's silence was deeply worrying. But if she was honest with herself, a large part of her anxiety was about whether she would be able to cope with what awaited her when she arrived back in England.

Over the years in India, Evie had focused mostly on working with new recruits and researching artifacts. She had kept up with her training, yes, but it was with sparring partners and wooden targets. It had been years since she had been on a mission, and even longer since her last kill.

She didn't know if she would be able to do what Jacob needed.

When she arrived and Sergeant- or Detective, now, she had to remember- Abberline showed her the first murder scene, the knot began to solidify into something that felt more like anger. She saw Jack's actions, the horrors that Jacob had not been able to put into words on a page. A sense of grim resolve gently unfurled in her veins, subtle as morning mist on the Thames.

By the time she saw the blood in Jacob's rooms, the knot had contorted into rage.

Her fury drove her. It focused her mind like nothing that she had experienced ever before, narrowing her world until it existed only for one thing:find Jack. Kill him.

She didn't avoid the Rooks, didn't try to minimize the bloodshed she inflicted in the streets. It made Detective Abberline despair and question her judgement, she knew, but she couldn't think clearly. They had betrayed Jacob, betrayed everything that he had spent twenty years working for, and caused him untold pain.

If they challenged her, it was a matter of moments before she threw the illusion of fear at them, their pathetic lives ending in a screaming haze of horror.

It was as good as they deserved.

She couldn't remember ever being this angry. Even those moments of fury against Starrick were nothing compared to this and the way that it crowded her every waking moment. It consumed her, and she embraced it. It staved off the despair that she could sense waiting in the wings.

Once upon a time, she saw the rivets on an automated loom come loose. The whole machine shuddered and shuddered until everything fell apart with a terrific bang, the metal crumpling in on itself as if it were paper. It was how she felt when she found Jacob, deep in the underbelly of Lambeth, his battered form slumped over. Like she would shudder apart, her helpless rage turned inwards, her whole body shredded from the inside.

She barely recognized herself.

Jack mocked her emotion as he tried to overcome her. He mistook her trembling for fear and assumed that he had the upper hand. "Come out and play," he taunted, "who is the cat and who is the mouse?"

Yes, you are skilled, she thought, as he parried her blows. You could have been a gifted Assassin. There is no shame in Jacob having lost to you, weighed down as he was by his hope of securing your redemption.

In a split second where Jack recoiled from her strike, his guard down, she dragged her knife through his entire neck with a furious scream.

Yes, you are strong. But I am stronger.

When Jacob opened his eyes to the four damp walls of his new prison, he had no sense of where he was or how long he had been out. He was underground, he knew, but that was it.

Everything hurt.

But Jack had no intention of allowing him to die; he forced food down Jacob's throat, drugged meals that arrived in strange intervals to disorient his sense of time. He was given clean water and even, once, some weak beer. Jack cleaned Jacob's wounds and braced his broken bones, intent on preventing possible infection.

Jacob soon realized that this was not driven by mercy. For as soon as the wounds were healed, Jack savagely reopened them. The bones only set long enough to be broken again under Jack's boot. It was an endless cycle of healing and hurting, healing and hurting.

It was not enough for Jack to wound him in body, of course. He visited for hours to taunt Jacob with stories of how Jacob's beloved recruits had died. These were women that Jacob had trained for years, some raised from childhood. Jack's descriptions of his disgusting pleasures were gleeful, so vivid that the first time he heard them, Jacob leaned over and vomited.

There was one thing, and one thing only, that kept Jacob afloat. It was the knowledge that Evie would come. She would be here, soon. And she would fix this.

It was the first bright spot of Jacob's imprisonment when Jack made the mistake of telling him that Evie had arrived. It was meant to taunt him, Jacob knew, accompanied as it was with threats of what Jack intended to do to her, revolting fantasies that he relayed to Jacob in gory detail.

But Jack did not know Evie.

Jack returned soon after and tried to make out that he had already killed her, defiled her and left her exposed on the road for the repulsive curiosity of the rabble. But Jacob was unruffled. Had Jack really killed Evie, Jacob had no doubt that he would have brought her body to his prison, a sick trophy of his triumph. There was no body. She was not dead.

Jacob knew that she was out there. And he knew that she would come. So he waited as he lived in dreams and memories, his mind far away; far enough away that he couldn't be reached by Jack and his sick pleasures.

And sure enough, in what could have been a year or a blink, there she was. She was as beautiful as he remembered. Hello, he wanted to say. I knew you would come. Don't worry, don't look so sad. Things will be better now that you're here. I love you. You're here. I knew you would come. I love you.

But his mouth would not move, so he leaned against her and hoped that it was enough for her to hear the determined beating of his heart.

She left the room while the physician examined him, not sure if she could stand to see the extent of his wounds. Afterwards, he was only able to tell Evie what she already knew: Jacob's wounds were many, and his recovery was uncertain.

She hovered over him for three days while he drifted in and out of consciousness. Not sure where else to go, she had brought him back to his old rooms, scrubbed clean of blood by an enterprising woman that Evie paid three shillings.

She worried that it was wrong to let him wake up to the scene of his capture. But she also worried that he would panic if he woke up in an unfamiliar location. There seemed to be no right answer.

Spreading a pallet out next to his bed, she kept vigil as he slept. She splurged on soft white bread and dipped it in milk, coaxing him to eat in the brief spurts where he was awake. She tried to get him to drink tea and wiped his forehead with damp rags in hopes of easing his fever.

She paced, hours of striding back and forth, her curdling anger still not entirely gone. But now, there was nowhere to vent it.

He had to recover. He had to.

Jacob felt himself becoming stronger in the intervals that he was awake, even if wasn't able to communicate that very well to Evie.

He mostly wished that she would stop looking so worried.

Unfortunately, his returning energy meant that his nightmares also returned. The pleading faces of his trainees haunted him whenever his eyes were closed; they asked why he abandoned them, why he hadn't been able to save them.

I'm sorry, he wanted to say. I'm so sorry. I tried. I wanted to. He would open his mouth to speak but his voice wouldn't work, and he would be back in the darkness of Lambeth, Jack hunched over him, killing them, taunting him.

But when he lurched awake in the darkness, soaked in sweat, unable to breathe, Evie was there. It felt wrong to be glad, but he was. She stroked his hair and pushed cool compresses to his neck, whispering calming sounds.

She was different, and his energy focused on finding those differences whenever he was awake. It was as though he couldn't believe that she was truly here. There were strands of silver in her hair now, and lines around her eyes and mouth. Age had made her quieter, less bossy than the young woman that he remembered. There was some stiffness in the way she moved. The search for Jack had taken a lot out of her.

But as days went by, it became painfully clear that she was also the same; same laugh, same eyes, same sharp mind. Same gentle touch. Still Evie. Still beautiful.

At some point, he pulled her into his arms and she let him. It was easier to sleep when he was curled around her, his hands around her waist, his nose in her hair, her sweet smell keeping the demons at bay. Later, he would think that it must have been agony for her, to be so still for hours and hours at a time when she was full of frantic energy. But she never stirred.

He started to get out of bed. They would have tea, the familiar ritual an anchor in his day. She talked aimlessly about the people in the building, gossiped about the women upstairs, the boys in the street, the men at the shop counters. He mostly nodded and drank his tea, but he appreciated the chatter.

He stretched his limbs, bending around the cramps in his muscles, sore from lack of use. He tested his ankle, terribly abused, trying to accept that he would probably always need a cane from now on. He let her help him when he finally decided that he needed to wash more than his hair; she went white as starched sheets when she first saw the scars that traced around his torso and legs. They were red and raw now, but they were clean, and he knew they would eventually fade to white.

They played cards. He was the much better gambler; she was still too cautious. She tried to teach him chess. He was terrible at it.

He started to laugh again, mostly because it was such a part of him that he couldn't not laugh. Slowly, so did she.

They ignored the world. She left to get their food and returned immediately, otherwise confined to the space of his rooms. He knew that she wanted him to go outside, but he wasn't ready yet. Not just yet.

There was a lot that was different from what Evie remembered about Jacob, but it was hard to say if that was because of their time apart or his ordeal with Jack.

He was much more sombre now, more serious. When she went out to fetch food, people spoke of his leadership in the community, the respect that he carried on his shoulders.

As he rested, she watched his features, and she couldn't help but notice that he was still handsome. Possibly more so than when he was young. She traced his jaw with her hand lightly, smiling a little as she remembered his frantic adolescent attempts to grow facial hair.

Before long he wanted her to sleep in his bed, and he was in such obvious pain that it was impossible to disagree. Even as he shivered from nightmares and moaned wordlessly at Jack in his sleep, she found that her body remembered a different sort of intimacy. It made her face flush like she was eighteen again, and she found herself grateful that he preferred to fold her smaller body into his, cradling her back. Her shame was her own.

He had thought he was perhaps old enough that he could keep his baser instincts in check, his experience harrowing enough that he would have no interest in anything other than recovering.

Unfortunately, Evie did not always bring out the best in him.

As always, as always, he was unwilling to push her. But he was willing to push himself to make her smile. He did training exercises with her, gentle stretching and endurance moves when he would much rather have stayed in bed and let the world roll on.

He let her bring some of the neighbourhood in to see him, people who had worried about him in his absence. Nellie cried when she saw him, taking his hands in hers and hiccoughing about how everyone had missed him. It was awkward. Evie smiled at him over the weeping woman's head, so it was worth it.

It was how he found himself, hand tucked securely in hers, leaning on his cane, being led up to the roof one afternoon.

"I don't know if I'm ready," he protested.

She tugged on his hand and smiled, and his chest flopped over. "You are. It's not properly outside. There are no people. It's a beautiful day, and you should see some sun- pastiness isn't attractive, whatever your stupid books about vampires might have told you."

He complained and she laughed, leaning down and bracing him under his armpits to help him through the trap ladder door. With anyone else, it would have been humiliating to the extreme. With her, he just found that his mouth was suddenly extremely dry because his face was pressed so close to her chest. Christ, was he still sixteen?

They sat on the roof. There was the initial rush of dizziness, the cramped feeling in his stomach, the sensation that his lungs couldn't fill to their capacity. The fear. But she held one of his hands and used her other to stroke his back, and the feeling gradually eased, replaced by warm sunshine on his face.

Maybe he could start again, he thought. It would be slow, and it would be hard, but maybe he could do it.

He looked at her and smiled. She smiled back.

He was feeling the flush begin to creep up his neck when, just like so many years ago, she leaned in and pushed her lips to his.

It was just like she remembered. Just as it ought to be. Achingly perfect.

When she pulled away, his brow was furrowed, and for a terrifying moment she thought that he was upset. Instead, he took a shaky deep breath and pulled her in again.

He broke the kiss and pressed his forehead to hers. "Are you going to leave again?"

She thought of India. She thought of Henry, of a marriage that would be perfect if it was enough to just be very good friends, to know each other well without mutual desire. She thought of the daughter that wasn't, the home that wanted to be, the love that wouldn't.

She thought of decisions made decades ago, about the sense of duty that bound her to them. About whether that was truly enough by itself, to keep her in one place.

She thought of Jacob, of the crumbling moment when she thought he was gone. Of opportunities lost. She thought of her remaining years, limited and precious, of what it was that she wanted from them.

She felt his fingers pressed to her waist, the tremor in his voice, thought of his long dark eyelashes.

"No," she said quietly. "No, I think I'll stay here."