TITLE: Nota Bene (6/7) Fiat Lux (let there be light)
AUTHOR: Blue Fenix
AUTHOR'S EMAIL: the_blue_fenix@yahoo.com
PERMISSION TO ARCHIVE: AuroraVernealis, Aurora Journals, and Fanfiction.net only
CATEGORY: Het; adventure
SPOILERS: Cardinal's Design, Cardinal's Revenge, Southern Comfort
RATINGS/WARNINGS: R for consensual heterosexual activity
MAIN CHARACTERS: Phileas Fogg, Passepartout, Rebecca Fogg, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas pere, Cavois, special guest villain
SUMMARY: With Jules helpless in the hands of Cavois and Dumas badly injured, the Foggs try to regroup tactically and emotionally before somebody dies.
DISCLAIMERS: the usual. Borrowed characters, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I've got no money to sue for.
Phileas Fogg lied like a trooper -- invoking his own personal fortune, the British ambassador, secret government missions and the honor of French literature -- to secure a private room for Dumas in the best hospital in Paris. Perhaps, Rebecca thought, he was gambling that their few days in intertemporal limbo would have ended by the time the various authorities had a chance to compare notes. Perhaps he didn't care any more.
The doctors stitched and bandaged the gash in Dumas' forehead. They put the old author to bed. When Phileas questioned the adequacy of the treatment in bitter, fluent French they only shook their heads and left patient and visitors alone. Fogg, in one of his periodic fits of non-chivalry, had commandeered the most comfortable chair in the hospital room. Rebecca let the issue pass, and took the second best chair for herself. There was a third but Passepartout remained standing, shifting from foot to foot with nervous energy. Fogg broke his reverie long enough to demand the latest copy of as many newspapers as Passepartout could find. The valet disappeared, relieved at having some definite task to accomplish. Fogg steepled his hands in front of him, elbows on the arms of the chair, and stared with great concentration at nothing. He avoided looking at Rebecca, at the sleeping Dumas, the view from the window. When the newspapers came he raised one like a shield, hiding his face. Rebecca smiled tense gratitude at Passepartout and nodded toward the last chair. The valet, too, settled in to wait.
Rebecca knew her cousin's reading speed. He had truly read a few columns toward the back of the paper, but for the most part he simply kept one page or another held up to hide his expression. It would have been tempting to slice it open with a throwing knife, if she'd had one. Under the circumstances, she chose to wait him out. It was forty-five minutes by the clock before Phileas spoke again. "Damned negligent doctors."
"Giving nature time to work is the only sensible treatment," Rebecca said. "As well you know. If they'd suggested an operation or anything of the kind, you'd be ranting just as loudly about leeches and medieval torture chambers."
Fogg's newspaper shifted. "It shouldn't have happened. Your friend told me in words of one syllable -- watch over Verne. When the crucial moment came, I forgot the warning."
Rebecca made a mental note that the future Phileas Fogg was firmly 'her friend' in the current one's lexicon, not any part of himself. "So did I," Rebecca said quietly. "So did Passepartout, for that matter; the warning was addressed to all three of us. I begin to believe that getting into trouble is Jules' nature. If there's blame to be rationed out we all deserve a share, including himself."
Phileas shook his head. "I should not have allowed it to happen." A hand gesture took in Dumas' unconscious state on top of everything else. "And now ..."
And now, God knows what they're doing to Jules Verne. Rebecca could finish the sentence without difficulty. It was a fear they'd shared often enough since the young writer had fallen into their lives. "Jules will come out of this," she said more decisively than she felt. "He keeps his wits about him, and he's too valuable to mistreat."
"He's too valuable to the League of Darkness. He's too valuable to anyone else who wants the benefit of his inventions," Phileas retorted. "Cavois is no builder or conqueror. He merely wants you and me dead." One hand closed on the edge of the newspaper until the knuckles went white with helpless rage.
"Master," Passepartout put in. His voice was timid; any pretext could serve as a lightning rod for Fogg's anger in this mood. "Only thinking... Rue Sante Rochelle..."
"What about it?" Fogg snapped back.
"The post office." The valet looked more upset by Fogg's slowness to follow him than by the minor burst of wrath. "Surely meaning this, when Cavois saying will send message to be picked up. Maybe already message there now. Passepartout can get it."
Phileas' attention was turned inward again for one, two beats longer than the simple proposition should have required. Rebecca bit her lower lip. He must be closer to unraveling than she'd realized. "No." Fogg spoke quickly, making up for lost reaction time. "Not this quickly. In any case, if they named that location even as a message drop, they can lay a trap for us there. One of us going out alone is taking too great a risk."
That's why he hesitated; he needed a plausible lie. Rebecca felt easier again, her knowledge of her cousin confirmed. "Even if that one is you," she said pointedly.
He understood her understanding. Fogg gave a sour half-smile and set down the newspaper to look Rebecca squarely in the eyes. "My word as a gentleman," he said softly. "I will not go to the post office in Rue Sante Rochelle without your knowledge to meet Cavois or to receive a message from him. Good enough?"
That at least wasn't his sort of lie. Rebecca was largely comforted, though she sensed a ghost of a loophole. "Nor from anyone else," she prompted. We know Cavois has help ...
Fogg repeated the codicil in a grim, weary voice. "I've made enough mistakes," he continued. "We can't afford even one more. That man," he gestured at Dumas, "risked his life for us and for Verne. The least we can do is find out if he's going to survive the experience. Waiting is the only safe move." From his expression, it tasted like salt and ashes. Phileas hated losing the initiative above all things. Rebecca patted his hand, attempting comfort.
-----
Time passed. Nurses came, and made cursory examinations of Dumas, and left again. Passepartout seemed to manage the long wait the best, because he could always set himself to some minor task. Fogg had given the rest of the stack of morning newspapers the same cursory attention he'd given the first one. Passepartout tidied them out of the way when Fogg was finished. A coal fire warmed one end of the room. Passepartout kept it blazing brightly, and went out for more coals when the scuttle was empty. An hour or so later the valet brought them cups of tea without being asked. "Thank you, Passepartout," Rebecca said quietly. The liquid was horrible -- her first sip made her suspect the cheap tea leaves had been used once before -- but at least he was trying.
Phileas made a sour face too, but he steeled his courage and took a full swallow. "Thank you indeed." It was the soft, almost hoarse voice he used when he was too low-spirited or simply too tired to stand on his dignity. Is there any way ... do you think you might find us some food, Passepartout? It's probably against some hospital rule, but I don't think we should leave him."
Passepartout's wide, round face lit up. "Bringing you a feast. Gods shall be jealous." He disappeared again before Fogg could countermand the order.
Rebecca hid a smile of her own. The valet's devotion to her cousin always charmed her. Heaven knew that Phileas needed a keeper. She'd wondered from time to time why a man with Jean Passepartout's talents was content to remain a servant. His mechanical skills alone could make him his own fortune. Certainly Fogg paid him well, but hero-worship had to be a large component of the relationship. Maybe Passepartout is like the rest of us, following Phil around out of a morbid curiosity to see what he'll do next.
Fogg had left his chair. He poured the vile cup of tea into a potted plant near the window. He leaned over the sickbed and touched Dumas' forehead, his long fingers avoiding the bandaged wounds. "He may be all right," Phileas said with real relief. "His color's good, and his breathing. I think he's only sleeping now, not comatose." He drew the blankets up a little further to keep the man warm. "I'm not sure I can tolerate losing anyone else at the moment."
He crossed to the open coal grate and stared into the flames. Rebecca remembered another cold, hopeless afternoon at Shillingworth Magna. She made a mental connection, and was angry that she hadn't realized it months ago. Whenever Jules is in danger, you don't see Jules. Or not only Jules. You see Erasmus, trusting you and following you. Fogg's brother had been several years older than Verne when he died. There was little resemblance, physical or emotional, between the two men. But that didn't matter when the voice of guilt spoke. Rebecca ached to go to him, to hold him as Phileas had done for her when she was a child. She held back. Her feelings now were not the simple ones of a child or a foster sister.
Phileas looked up, as if feeling her eyes on him. Rebecca felt her face flush instantly red. He saw it, or saw something. A ghost of a smile played at one corner of his mouth. "Tuppence for your thoughts."
Rebecca raised irony as an automatic shield. "I thought the going rate was a penny."
"Your thoughts are worth twice as much as anyone else's. At the very least." One of Phileas' hands was busy, taking a wad of scrap paper from one trouser pocket and flinging it on the fire. His eyes remained fixed on Rebecca.
She was never going to stop blushing at this rate. "Funny old world, isn't it?" she quoted the music-hall saying. "Still, you have to laugh." Rebecca caught up the top sheet of one of the refolded newspapers and hid behind it.
She couldn't see him now. That after all was the point of hiding her face. Rebecca heard him move. She feared ... wanted ... to see his hands twitch the paper aside and make her face him. But his quiet footsteps went back to his own chair.
She'd seen this coming. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen this coming. She'd known that there were more and subtler risks in going to Phileas' bed last night than mere pregnancy. She'd been more relieved than offended (far more, she repeated for the tingle in her stomach which didn't believe a word of it) when Phileas refused her. The rational response, just as he'd said, was to wait out this reaction until the emotional state between them returned to normal. She had underestimated the extent of her own lust, that was all. A lot of women felt this way about Phileas Fogg; it would pass. She'd seen it happen.
Phileas' looks and income and smooth public social graces had attracted a steady flow of feminine attention. Respectable and otherwise, women were drawn to him like moths to flame. He was discreet, but Rebecca had seen the dance often enough. She'd seen too how they left again, driven off by his secretive nature or his drinking or his sudden fits of temper and self-loathing. A few hadn't lived to leave him. His work, official or not, dragged him into acute danger at unpredictable intervals. Gently reared young ladies who followed him into such situations, or whom he found already embroiled in crisis, didn't always come out again however hard he tried to protect them.
The pattern had only grown worse since his brother's death. He seemed to launch himself into trysts now, whether matters of the heart or simply of appetite, with the despair of the foredoomed. The whirlwind romance with Saratoga Browne, even before its catastrophic end, had some of the clutching quality of a drowning man with one last chance at a life line. Its aftermath had brought him lower than Rebecca had ever seen him. He'd sought death before, but never with such fixed determination and never over a lost lover.
Her determination to leave well enough alone wavered. Phileas can't go on like this. Men who knew Phileas Fogg's public face, the methodical agent with the tastes of a bon vivant, saw him as hard and self-reliant and ruthless. Women who'd fallen in love with him dismissed the harsh surface as a defensive shell over a heart that was all too vulnerable. Rebecca seemed to be alone in the insight that both sides, the fragile lover and the cool-eyed killer, were genuine. People, including Fogg himself, had tried to find him peace by smothering one side or the other of his divided soul. Rebecca no longer believed that method could work. A dynamic balance between his two halves, sating the hungers for comfort and danger alike, seemed a fool's chance to provide him long-term stability. But Rebecca suspected that anything less offered no hope at all.
Or rather, you're sure that's what YOU need. The accusing voice in her head sounded remarkably like her cousin's. Writing the rules of the contest so that only you can win. What was that about your being different from all the others?
It was true that her views on Phileas' Janus-faced personality were affected by her own divided nature. But that doesn't mean I'm wrong. On the contrary. Their shared upbringing and career made the parallel a trustworthy guide. She'd had her own brushes with friends or suitors who grasped one side of her personality and treated her as if that fragment was her whole soul.
If truth were told, Rebecca was probably further from the nebulous goal of inner peace than her cousin was. She could kill more easily than Phileas, and with fewer moral pangs afterward. In recent years she'd taken to rubbing men's noses in that aspect of herself, Jules for instance, poor boy, when they seemed too enamored of her ladylike surface. If Phileas lived to be old, Rebecca could imagine him as an embittered and alcoholic roue -- or a gigolo, if his money ran out -- using women as superficial sources of comfort. But she could imagine herself little better, her energy turned inward and soured into a defensive viciousness as age narrowed her world.
He's not the only one who can't go on. We'll both come to the end of ourselves. Rebecca had told herself that she couldn't afford to offer herself to Phileas. She'd feared that a failed romance between them would damage them both more deeply than anything else could. She'd begun to wonder, lately, if the results of doing nothing might be still worse. By training and temperament, any action however risky was easier for her than inaction. She had to try again; not a seduction, but honesty. There had to be peace between them if they expected to survive.
Rebecca set the newspaper on the floor by her chair. Phileas was still watching her. The hollow in the pit of her stomach felt like the first time she'd had to report a failed mission to her guardian. No delay would make it better, she knew. "I owe you an apology. That was pretty badly timed, wasn't it?"
Some men would have been confused. Phileas knew her very well. "Starting to make love in a burning building? It did lack something in the area of common sense."
"I don't mean the fire. I was afraid. After you told me, or rather the other one told me, that you didn't want to live ... I didn't see what else I could do."
Phileas looked somber. "If you're determined to have me outlive you, then no. Making me depend on you even more wasn't the best way to go about it." His voice dropped still lower. "I need you so terribly as it is. Not to ..." He looked away, and started again. "I just need you to be nearby. I need to see you and talk to you, so I know you're well." His eyes came up to hers; Rebecca shivered with the impact. "You don't have to do anything else, you know. I haven't earned anything more."
"Earned?" Rebecca felt sudden, cold anger like a stomach full of poison. Against herself, and Phileas, and Sir Boniface ... everything and everyone that had brought him to this state. "I'm not a queen handing out medals. What have you done that's so horrible you have to atone for it before you earn any happiness?"
He shrugged, as if it were obvious. "You know the answer."
Him too. She could have beaten her younger cousin to a pulp for what his death had done to Phileas. "You did not kill Erasmus. You didn't ask him to die. You didn't let him die. The League wounded him, and he decided to take the quick way out. You were only a witness."
"I didn't stop him. I didn't stop them. I didn't do anything of use to anyone." Phileas looked up again, hollow-eyed. "I've been thinking about your friend. I suspect now that he wound up in entirely the wrong part of parallel time. Maybe he was from a world where Erasmus never died at all. At least, not like that. That's why he was so ... that's the difference. It's the only logical explanation."
Yes, Phileas definitely belonged on the list of people to beat senseless. But the urge to hold him, to comfort him was still stronger. Can you imagine no healing of that wound? Rebecca made her voice stay level. "You keep saying 'My friend.'"
"Well, you did take to him."
Maybe I can beat him and then comfort him. "To Phileas Fogg, you mean," Rebecca said with tooth-grinding patience. Her cousin looked back blankly, as if she were speaking gibberish.
Her self-control came unhinged. "Good God." Her voice soared far too loud for a sickroom. She levered herself suddenly from her chair and began to pace. "I've said it about ten times now -- 'he' is you." Phileas hadn't had a chance to rise with her; Rebecca loomed over him, fists clenched. "Why is that so difficult for you to grasp?"
Phileas matched her volume and more, each word bitten out separately. "Because he is nothing like me!" The last syllable raised echoes; they both started and fell silent like guilty children. "He isn't," Phileas almost whispered. "He's ... balanced, I suppose the word is. Calm, relaxed. Happy. Anyone can see that he doesn't get up every morning and look for a reason not to shoot himself." His eyes came up again, shame and defiance in one.
I wanted the whole truth. I wanted his walls down. Rebecca in her time had faced armed men and leaped over fatal cliffs. All the courage she'd ever learned was barely enough to keep her looking into Phileas' eyes. He was watching for her to flinch, expecting it. Maybe wanting it, in a way; it would be the excuse he needed to truly give up. She couldn't bear the thought. "Go on." Her face, her voice might not be normal but she would refuse him no connection that might give him comfort.
Phileas sighed. "I've wondered whether you could ever love me." He was the one who broke eye contact, suddenly developing an intense interest in the toes of his shoes. "The last few days I've realized the answer. You could -- if I were a completely different person." His voice turned a shade more bitter. "I think you only came to me because you'd discovered you had an appetite for him."
A short, ugly laugh escaped Rebecca as she understood the latest turn of the labyrinth. "You're jealous of your other self."
Fogg smiled sourly. "Foolish, isn't it? Yes. I hate the bastard. I know I shouldn't. An optimist," he made it sound like an obscenity, "would say that if he can mold his character to that end, so can I." He paused. Even after they'd come this far, there were further words he was afraid to say. They finally came out, almost inaudible. "I don't know how much I can change. Even for you."
Tears stung Rebecca's eyes. She smiled tightly at her own foolishness. She couldn't stay angry at Phileas, not like this. She sank to her knees in front of his chair. "You ..." She had to touch him and she did, using combat-trained muscles to pull him forward against her. For an instant he resisted. Then he let out a single sob like something breaking and wrapped his arms around her. His breath was ragged, like weeping, but so was hers; it was impossible to tell comforter from comforted.
Rebecca found herself stroking his hair over and over. "You don't have to change." An absurd laugh escaped her; it hurt but it also felt good. "You're vain, and arrogant, and stubborn as a mule ... and you're the man I fell in love with. Just as you are. All I ask is that you keep being that way. Just keep breathing. If you change a little at a time, as you get used to being happy, that's one thing. You don't have to change first to earn the right to be happy."
He was reveling in her touch, every muscle as relaxed as if it were getting him drunk. Another few seconds, and he tensed again. Phileas backed up, just a few inches, to look Rebecca in the eye without letting her out of his arms. "That you fell in love with," he repeated as if it were a foreign language.
Rebecca smiled. "That's what I said. I believe your memory is as good as mine."
One of his hands drifted up. His fingertips traced her cheek, the line of her lips, as if she might shatter. "Me?" His voice trembled.
She nodded seriously, her eyes dancing. "You."
He was still Phileas Fogg; a sardonic smile momentarily touched his lips. "God help you." Then he pulled her against him, hard.
Passepartout found them, some time later, squeezed into the single chair. Rebecca, mostly on top of the tangle, was in a less than observant mood. She noticed Phileas stiffen and his hand slide out of the hair at the back of her head. Only then did she turn her face away, breathing a little fast. She saw the valet in the doorway.
The Frenchman looked as if he'd been hit in the back of the head with a board. A heavily laden tray occupied both his hands. It tilted dangerously before he got a white-knuckled grip on the handles. "Thousands of pardons," Passepartout said. "Not thinking to knock, is not done for valet. Will know next time ..."
Rebecca moved out of Phileas' lap before the poor man burst a blood vessel. "Thank you, Passepartout." She smoothed her dress. A glance out the window confirmed that the winter's early sunset had come and gone. She realized she was ravenous. "A meal will do all of us good, I'm certain."
The commonplace remarks gave Passepartout something to focus on. A small table was pushed up against the wall on one side of the door. Passepartout began to lay it out with the contents of his tray. He set out food, drinks and tableware. Rebecca watched his body language. The routine task seemed to have a settling effect for the valet. His hands grew steadier as he went, until he was behaving normally. He seemed to be thinking hard, although Rebecca was unable to guess the direction of his thoughts. She could imagine any reaction from enthusiastic approval to hysterical jealousy.
Even her own reactions were far from settled. She'd committed herself now, without question. Her emotions about that fact fluctuated wildly from euphoria to panic unless she kept a firm grip on herself. Rebecca glanced across at Phileas. He was on his feet too now, looking out the window. He looked calm. Rebecca suspected his emotions were little more settled than her own. There's a time and a place for everything. Time enough for this when we've got poor Verne safely home. She hoped she was keeping her composure as well as Phileas was.
Passepartout finished his preparations and stepped away from the table with a flourish. "Dining is served."
With no dining table deserving the name, they prepared plates for themselves and took them back to their chairs. Passepartout waited. It would be a great breach of decorum for a servant to eat with the better classes. That rule was frequently suspended on the Aurora or other situations among themselves, but Passepartout seemed very attached to protocol at the moment. He's probably wondering what this latest whim of ours will do to his place in our little band. She couldn't provide much help even if she broke another rule to speak openly about it; her own place felt very uncertain.
Fogg nodded after a few bites of food. "Very satisfactory, Passepartout. Very resourceful of you." He continued eating.
Passepartout smiled and looked more comfortable. "Is always trying anticipating what master will need next. This is valet's profession. Also thinking -- is there to be renting of a hotel room?"
Fogg's expression darkened. Rebecca felt a surge of outrage herself, but couldn't sustain it. Passepartout's wide-eyed look of horror as he realized what he'd said was transparently honest. "Sorry! Not to say ... not to meaning ... only to mean, not thinking ..."
Rebecca smiled a little in spite of herself. Phileas caught it, out of the corner of his eye, and reined in his temper. "Perhaps you'd care to start again?" he suggested, his voice falsely light.
The valet grimaced. "Passepartout means, about Monsieur Dumas." He gestured at the deeply sleeping man. "Much said before about safety being in the numbers, everyone keeping together." He was choosing his words carefully. "Thinking this is still master's intention?"
Fogg nodded. "Indeed."
"Thinking so too, and so Passepartout asked things of workers in hospital. Another room is just down the hall, close. Sometimes the students doctors stay there between rounds. Not much. Only for one the chaise lounge, you say the sofa, but enough for resting without being too isolated. And not difficult that we are permitted to use it." Passepartout mimicked rubbing coins between his thumb and fingers.
"We can take it in turn, watching Dumas or napping," Rebecca said. "It's a lot better than nothing. I don't fancy the look of this floor."
Phileas nodded his agreement. They turned back to their meals. In a few minutes, Phileas remembered his responsibilities and muttered something that Passepartout correctly took as permission to start eating dinner himself. The valet's hands moved over the table with efficient grace, tidying empty and half-empty plates as well as serving himself. The mindless routine seemed to relax him from his earlier embarrassment. Passepartout began humming and talking to himself under his breath as he worked, something he often did on the Aurora. "Not bad thing, not problem, good thing," he whispered. "Nobody leaving, no strangers and the heartbreaks; keeping close. And by and by such pretty babies, brave and smart ..."
"Go to hell, Passepartout." The words shot from Rebecca's lips with venom she hadn't known she felt. She'd killed while feeling less anger. The valet flinched as if she'd struck him. He turned to face her, his face chalk white. From his crouching posture, it wouldn't surprise him if she did follow words with violence. Damn. Rebecca owed an apology, once for eavesdropping and twice for losing her temper, but damned if she was going to. Phileas was watching her too. She couldn't read his expression. She could always read his expression but not this time, he was guarding himself. Well, that was the shortest romance on record. Rebecca wished for a quiet corner where she could be alone and pound her head against the wall.
"If you'd be so good, Passepartout," Phileas said quietly, "the evening editions. They must be out by now. All the different papers you can find ... have you got enough money?"
"Money? Yes, having francs." Passepartout absently patted his coat pocket. He was still looking at Rebecca. He opened his mouth as if to apologize, closed it again. "Excusing then, master." He left the room, nearly running.
Rebecca had the urge to escape with him. Anything but staying and having this conversation with Phileas. His face was still enigmatic. He set his dinner plate aside. "Have I ever," he said softly, "tried to compel you to do something against your will?"
"Madame Robley's Finishing School," Rebecca shot back. She had other examples, from their years as agents together, but the childhood incident came to the surface first. "You convinced me that if I stopped running away, your father would arrange extra tutors for riding and fencing instead of those appalling watercolor classes."
"And I was telling the truth, wasn't I?" he said. Rebecca could only nod. "Believe me now." His eyes were huge and dark, fixed on hers. She could drown. "I want to see you happy more than I want anything else on earth. Anything at all."
Rebecca folded her hands in her lap. She stared at them. "I have worked very hard to get my life the way it is," she whispered. "It's not the pain or the danger I'm afraid of, truly. It's being walled up alive out in the country somewhere, wiping runny noses and bloody well knitting while the world goes on without me."
"I can understand that." Phileas was having to work at keeping his tone neutral. She appreciated the effort. "It's not inevitable, you know."
"Nor is it easy to avoid. Not if ..." Rebecca met his eyes again, and smiled helplessly. "I want to be with you. During battles and after them." She could just reach him, across the space between the two chairs. Her fingers rested lightly on his wrist. Phileas turned his hand and held hers, loosely enough that she could let go if she wanted. "I just don't know how to have it both ways."
He squeezed her hand gently. His skin was warm. "I mean what I said earlier. You needn't give me anything you don't choose to. What you've done already... if I were struck by lightning tonight, the last half hour with you is the very last thing in my life I'd regret."
A quote skidded through her mind. I were but little happy, if I could say how much ... "Yes." Rebecca squeezed his hand tighter.
"I don't have a solution," Phileas said. "But will you accept that I won't ask you to settle for any less? I do value your honor."
That's why I love you. "And I yours," Rebecca said.