Jezabel

The world is strangely difficult to move through. The printed words prove elusive, and halfway through my fourth attempt at parsing a paragraph, Neil shuffles some papers around, his signal that he wants to tell me something. Annoyed, I stare at him over the novel.

"You already know what I mean to discuss with you."

"Do I?"

Neil exhales in exasperation. "I take it, then," he begins carefully, searching for his favorite euphemisms, "that your unfortunate nature has been a source of difficulty lately?" His hands steepled, as he leans towards me, all intense, unwanted concentration.

That is really not a path I would like to pursue. "No," I insist, averting my gaze. Outside, a deer roams in the fog, sniffling in the shorn grass, its legs thin and tawny. A lone figure against the white. I wonder how it has come to stray so far from the forest and towards the house. Surely it must know that there are filthy people nearby. Perhaps I can befriend it, feed it some—

"You handed in your resignation," Neil states, with no room for dispute. "Did something unfortunate happen?

His attempts to define what is acceptable and what is not strikes me as ludicrous. One man's symptoms of madness has been the staples of my everyday life at Delilah. Father lived the remainder of his life under the guidance of a ghost. Once, passing by his room in a daze of warmth and viscera, my mind whitened by the recent murder—a mercy-killing, really, given that I removed one more filthy human being from the face of the earth— I overheard him arguing with his beloved Augusta. And not for the first time, I wondered if he was not, in fact, conversing with the devil. A soul for a soul, in true Faustian fashion. The thought chilled my skin. How strange that such a being frightened me, for there are a not-insignificant number of people in London who would swear that I am, truly, the devil himself. And perhaps they are correct.

How would Neil react, to learn that both Father's sons have blood on their hands? Or does he know?

Undeterred by my sullen silence, Neil exhales and withdraws his intense focus, now deciding on a different tactic. "What is it, then? Are you unhappy here?"

He has gone too far this time, to pretend to care about me. I smile in a show of suppressed anger, which never failed to unnerve Cassian. ("Oh, you better not be cross with me, Doctor.") Somehow he always knew when I was angry with him; he'd always reach in his coat—always a dark one—for a cigarette, grumbling that I needed a longer leash for my temper and didn't I make him work for his pittance? How his Irish mother would be cursing him from her pauper's coffin if she knew just what he had become. And not one of your English curses either, he always amended. A real strong Irish one to strip the flesh right off your bones. He would inhale deeply, looking me over in a vaguely annoyed way. It'd send you straight to your grave, he'd add flippantly, signalling the beginning of his favorite topic—my health, or lack thereof. To which, I always replied that I could easily find a better assistant, one without peasant superstitions. And he would exhale his cloud of cheap, adulterated smoke, raise an eyebrow, and ask me just what I thought I was doing with all my research on the dead. This whole damn place is full of superstitions come true, he'd mutter, grinding the cigarette stub into sparks and ash with his heel. Now, what does the learned doctor want?

At the memory of Cassian's annoyed face, I laugh a little—and Neil looks more than slightly alarmed at my actions. In his brief startling, my happiness evaporates. Do you think I'm going to eviserate you?, I almost snap. Like in a penny dreadful? And in the slow, steady way he surveys me, the way one watches an unpredictable creature, I have my answer. I do not know if I am more upset with him for treating me so, or with myself for justifying his fears. A dull pain starts in my head again. I wasn't always like this, but I won't be like that again. And there is something to be said for the way that being treated as a wild, irrational creature can make anyone start to feel like one.

And for a moment, I feel trapped, suffocatingly trapped in this study with the leather-bound books and the heavy curtains drawn back for the meager English morning. Even the rain seems to be conspiring against me, to keep me here, as it taps on the window, against the shingles. No, I could leave—I could leave all of them—

I'm not certain anymore.

To mask my unease, I settle for some cruelty of my own. "You may as well admit," I say coldly, quietly, giving into the bitterness of self-pity, "that you don't know what to do with your cousin's bastard son." I cannot quite decide if it is worth the momentary shock on his face. Yes, that should be a suitable reminder that I can be cruel just as easily as he can; cruelty and hardness can be a convenient protection, if only a self-eroding one. Nothing is wasted on a cruel person, and perhaps that's for the best.

Neil, however, is not about to humor me. "You don't know what to do with yourself," he replies, and for a moment, I am furious with him, for so easily guessing my troubles, and terrified that I am so transparent in my emotions that even Neil can deduce them. I don't know how to explain to him that I am not certain as to what I should do with the unmarked life I have—that even as I realize that I do not enjoy being a physician, I cannot relinquish it, because it's how I was shaped. It brings me no joy to save men from their fate, when God's creatures are subjected to the plow and the whip and the butcher's knife. All man's ill-gotten dominion.

(But what else—who else would I be?)

He takes my wounded speechlessness as confirmation. "I'm not your enemy," he continues, still firm, but a little softer. "No one here is."

I cannot bear to look at him now. How dare he carry on as if nothing has happened between us. As if he did not conspire to be rid of me in the worst possible way. Under the table, my hands shake with anger and fear.

"All I want is your happiness," he insists. "But you have to tell me what you want." He pauses. "If you even know what that might be."

A familiar constriction returns to my chest.

"Why did you let him pass the night in your bedroom? Again?" In your bed goes unspoken between us. Oh, Neil has never been blind to that possibility; I'll wager the entire family has been obsessively observing Cain for the slightest deviance to confirm his inheritance, which he has, in turn, been giving them spitefully in abundance. "You'll ruin him, ruin his chances to make a good match. Cain's too headstrong to see clearly. He thinks notoriety is only another synonym for attention. I don't want him to find out in a few years' time that it is one thing to follow a man's antics in the gossip columns, and another entirely to marry into his family." Neil hesitates, tense from an almost-anxiety. "And no woman will share her husband with his brother."

A sharp pain starts in my chest. How dare he remind me that it is my presence that complicates matters, wrecks his precious Cain's future. Even now, it seems that we cannot both exist—one of us has to die for the other to live. And I, God help me, I want Cain. I want him so badly that I can hardly stand it. I don't know if I want to be him, or if I simply desire to be so close to him that matters of the flesh are not relevant. A sordid tangle of lust and newfound closeness.

Neil inhales slowly, bracing himself. "One day, you'll find that your substitute for Alexis is only that. And then what will you do? Who will be your next Alexis? Your next savior?"

The boundaries of the study blur, losing their shape. I bite my lip against the sudden, hot demand of tears. I won't let him see me cry. How easy it must be, for him to speak of saviors, when he has never needed one, never known the blinding, desperate rage of never being enough for anyone.

"People grow apart," he adds gently. "Cain will have an heir to raise."

Yes, I know. I am painfully aware of how superfluous I am. Father made sure I held no delusions about my replaceability. After a particularly gruesome failure, he grabbed me by the upper arm, and dragged me into a corner. With his back to the garish gaslights, the only light on Father's face was his feverish anger in his eyes. Darkness masked his face, the thin Hargreaves nose and the narrow Hargreaves lips, and his shadow, in turn, fell across me, wrapping me in its shroud. (His existence negating mine). And I wondered, idly, if he would kill me then. He watched me for the slightest twitch of fear, waiting the way a spider will sometimes, anticipation tensing his limbs. You've been very confident, Jezabel, he breathed, savoring the name he gave me. (To name is to own. It's not an accident that God's first act after creating Adam was to name him.) Very confident, indeed. But, I fear, this overconfidence of yours, this pride of yours, will lead you astray. And I do not have the time to indulge your fancies. Get it right the first time. Or ... He simply exhaled, pipe smoking clinging to his clothes, leaving my fate unspoken between us. His eyes too bright for the dark circles under his eyes. Augusta, or rather his delusion of her, must have been driving him again. I know the price of failure is death, as are the wages of all, I've practiced on the body of my predecessor. No one leaves Delilah.

(What Father forget, however, is that to name is to differentiate: in naming the animals, Adam became separate from them, from the creatures that shared his life and his mortality. But at the same time, Adam and the animals became inseparable, for they depended on each other for their being, their own definition. Father defined me as soiled and insubstantial, but to be a lord, one must have followers. A king without his subjects is indistinguishable from anyone else. Will Cain, then, still be Cain without an Abel? Or will he become someone else? And the thought that Cain can be separate and whole without me both frightens and angers me in a way that I could not have foreseen, for my existence has always required his.)

At my silence, something akin to regret comes over Neil, as if he has realized that he has pushed too hard. "Get some rest," he adds, in a tone one could mistake for gentleness. "You look as though you're coming down with something."

His interest in my health angers me, that he should feign an interest in what has never bothered him before. But, then, again, I suppose it would have been easier for Neil and the rest of them if I had died in surgery or in the house in the forest that I have long since left.

As I leave him, a wracking cough seizes me. And my blood runs cold at the recognition of that familiar pressure on my chest, the telltale sign of the accumulation of fluid.

How much time did I think I had left?

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted—

But what the nameless author of Ecclesiastes never mentions is how it is never enough time, before we must return to the dust that begot the animals and Adam, sin and that old snake. I'll be dead soon enough, perhaps not tomorrow, but soon. I'll fade away, each infection stealing a little more of my strength, until my lungs are corroded from the scar tissue. A feeble mass of scarred tissue too stiff to be of use.

That is, if I survive this one.

(And that old voice reminds me that it is within my power to close this door. I know how easily life can be extinguished.)

I have spent so many years wanting to be dead, living in a maimed, hollow space that I believed to be akin to death. A skinless, red void of pain and disdain, blood and bones.

I think of the dog, the nameless dog that I spent hours stitching back together. His dull leather collar, cracked a little already. The way he nestled against me, as if he could see past the sin and the hardness to find something in me. He was the first one to mark my humanity—the first one to show me that my hardness was only an illusion, and not even a well-crafted one at that.

I remember the spider in the corner of my laboratory at Delilah. A feeble dust mote, suspended in the air. A tightrope walker that crept out at night to keep me company. Once, it made the mistake of making itself known during the day, and Michaela threw her parasol at it, shrieking as though it held a knife to her throat, and it required all of my willpower not to strike her silent.

I think of Snark, and—

Is that that why I am reliving this? To find my place in the long line of the dead?

Will I be cast into hell for all I have done, or will He take mercy on me? Father always reminded me that I was irrevocably stained for what I had done—and have done—but is anyone truly lost to God? Or will I be cast into a different hell—the hell of nothingness? No thought, no feeling. No time. Just stopped for all of eternity—a pause. Lost to a different sleep and a different silence, with nothing and no one to mark that I had been, that I had lived, save a few lines on a gravestone and records that will quickly become meaningless. Or will I become a ghost, damned to witness my own erasure? To watch the world continue to move on, all the while being still and stagnant? Voiceless and aimless, just as I was in life, but with the cruel certainty that, at least, alive, I could have made a change.

I don't want to die. Even in my death wish, there was only a wish for the pain and uncertainty to cease. Nothing ever wants to die. The urge to live is in the way the dying man scrabbles at the clean, deep line across his neck, as if that will help, or the way a half-crushed insect unflinchingly drags itself onward. (The poor, maimed beetle snapped under a little weight—a mercy-killing that felt like murder. They always do.)

And it becomes harder to breathe. I brace myself with one hand against the steady permanence of the wall. I gasp—and gasp; my hand flies to my chest—as I force the air into the lungs—which will not accept it. The room begins to fade at the edges of my sight. My hand slips—the room continues to spin—and—and I'm falling again—falling and falling—anticipating the impact that never comes.

Cain

It's hardly out of the ordinary to spot one of the footmen above stairs, quickly moving in search of Uncle Neil, or carrying out some other errand, and I almost give it no thought, until I spot that tumble of white hair, pale as glass, over his arm. With a quiet horror, I realize that he must be carrying Jezabel back to his room. My blood stills, the air thickens, and a thousand explanations race through my head, each halting and half formed: he fell off his horse; he fainted, because he hasn't come to terms with the fact that semi-starvation cannot solve anything, only worsen it; he poisoned himself because I couldn't—didn't—tell him that it was wrong of his mother to stay silent about such a thing.

Against the pillows, Jezabel seems oddly frail in a way I have seldom thought of him as. I knew about his childhood illnesses, but this feels different, somehow. His tie has been loosened, and along his exposed, pale neck runs the blue of a visible vein—I forget its name, Riff has told me numerous times, but I could never remember. I watch it in grotesque curiosity at how closely it runs to the surface, to the skin, and wonder if Jezabal's bizarre fascinations are beginning to rub off on me. Pity, that. I suppose I'll start to worry when I find myself soliloquizing on the merits of a scalpel.

A soft intake of breath and the faint stirring tell me that he has regained consciousness, and sure enough, he opens his cold amethyst eyes, a haughty Sleeping Beauty. Although he regards me with his characteristically detached demeanor, there is still the sense that something is wrong with him. His pupils are normal, indicating that he has not decided to poison himself abruptly, but his breath is labored and there's a faint flush in his face. A fever?

What gives me pause, however, is the uncertainty on his face, as he stares at me, unable to place me. A chill settles on my skin. Who does he take me for?

"You must have fallen," I begin, matter-of-factly. "One of the footmen brought you upstairs."

He closes his eyes again, his hair strewn across the pillows. A sudden desire to touch a strand sparks within me. I half wonder if it will dissolve in my hand, like a memory. So lost am I in the way the light catches in his hair, that I almost startle when he begins to speak in a slightly breathless, pained tone.

"I suppose you already called for a doctor." He coughs a little.

"Healthy people don't faint," I retort, slightly defensive and slightly annoyed at being predictable.

"You're insufferable, sometimes." Before I can wonder about the way he adds a qualifier to his assessment of me, he stops halfway, one hand against his head, as pain blanches his face. His other hand tightens on the quilt, drawing it into a bundle. He draws in a long, shuddering breath, staring at the ceiling. "I don't need some half-trained doctor, with his leeches and his bloodletting," a faint sneer crosses his lips at this archaic understanding of medicine, "to tell me that my lungs are failing."

I frown. "Failing? Didn't Father—didn't he fix that?"

A long pause falls between us, and I can easily surmise the answer. This mystery aliment has no cure—it doesn't even seem have a name.

Bitterness darkens Jezabel's face, as he twists the printed bellflowers of the blanket in pain. "Father used to tell me that I wouldn't live past thirty. That the transplant would eventually fail, and that death was only a matter of time." He glares at me, placing the blame unfairly on me. Or is it the blame of Father's meddling? Would Father have bothered with the surgery if he had not been useful? If I had not been born?

I had never given that a thought, but now it looms over me. "Father was wrong about a lot. What about a new transplant?"

He shakes his head slightly. "The operation itself is beyond the capabilities of today's doctors. It's a slow decline, as the fluid accumulates and the scar tissue forms." Fleetingly, a look of helplessness and terror crosses his face. "Who would choose such a death?"

Although his horror at such prospects upsets me, given his remarkable understanding of medicine, I try not to let it show. "Well, before we decide to smother you, let's get a second opinion." I pause, wondering how best to get him to cooperate. "I wager you can't go the entire visit without complaining."

A flash of annoyance, before he replies, in a childish, sullen tone. "Well, I wager you're wrong."

I seize my opportunity. "Then it's a bet. If I'm right, then you have to rest for a week."

"But what do I win if you're wrong," he asks, crossing his arms. "Which you most certainly are."

I frown, stumped. What do I have that he could possibly desire? (Besides my eyes and my organs and everything that I have heard far too much about for my well-being.) "I don't know. What do you want?"

He contemplates my question for a few moments, staring thoughtfully at the window. I hope he doesn't want something ludicrous. "I've grow rather fond of my organs," I add. "I don't think I can bear to part with them now. We're much too attached."

He smiles at my nervousness, a faintly mischievous smile that I do not like, and determines his reward.

I nearly flush. Well. "Sometimes," I manage, trying to compose myself, "sometimes I think you and Mary are in league."

Pneumonia.

Hardly the death sentence Jezabel seems to see it as, but not something to take lightly either. Apparently proving me wrong is one of Jezabel's favorite pastimes, for he is a beautifully docile patient, when he makes up his mind to be. He gives me a self-satisfied look, as the doctor concludes his exam, the only departure from his otherwise convincing performance. A little unsteady from the analgesic, he sinks back into the pillows, the picture of fragility and feigned meekness. I, in turn, wipe away the blood away from the injection site in the inside of his arm, and begin to massage the area gently, in the hope that there will not be a sizable bruise in the morning. I wrinkle my nose at the stiff smell of the disinfecting alcohol, which still hangs in the air. So unlike the sweet, sharp allure of my poisons.

The doctor lays out a relatively simple treatment plan, consisting of medicine, bed rest, and eating properly—at this, Jezabel's eyes narrow slightly, and I remember the last time he railed about the sins of meat-eating at a family dinner, citing everything from Percy Shelley to the Book of Genesis; I have never seen Uncle Neil's eyebrows raised so high. Although my brother remains outwardly sweet, I can tell from the slight tension around his mouth that his patience ended a while ago, and so I conclude the visit, arranging for the fee and expressing my sincere thanks that he could make it on such short notice.

When I return, I find the dog curled obstinately next to Jezabel, clearly vexed that it was not allowed to be present during the exam. I shrug my apologies. The rain has abated, for now, leaving a brooding sky behind. A perfect match for the brooding storm next to me. Jezabel runs his fingers through the dog's dark fur, desperately seeking reassurance; I perch on the bed beside him, my hand sliding over his free hand.

"You won," I state simply, hoping that this will end this quietness of his.

His hand merely continues its course, and then stops suddenly, resting on the dog's spine. At this pause, the dog gives him a questioning glance, something moving behind its dark eyes. Something that, the longer I examine it, starts to resemble concern.

There is an unsettling blankness to Jezabel's face, and I wonder if it is upsetting to be touched by a stranger, even a well-meaning stranger, to be handled as if one were only a doll and not a sentient being. It must have reminded him of his past illnesses, and I suspect that that is truly what is present here. Not the pneumonia, but the nameless illness of his childhood. It must be agonizing to be trapped in a body that keeps failing, that is unstable, and in the end, so vulnerable.

I consider the ointment that is supposed to be applied to his chest, to ease his coughing. "Should I, or do you want to...?"

Jezabel shrugs.

I undo the lid, take some of the ointment into my hand, warming it, and my face warming slightly at the prospect of touching my brother, albeit in the most strictly platonic manner. My hand edges towards the careless fold of the printed dress gown. The pale of my hand made luminescent against the gentle lavender and white cranes, before it slips under the fabric. The smoothness of the silk brushes against the top of my hand as I slowly apply the mixture to his heated skin. His heartbeat, already quick from the infection, increases, and he searches my face. Half hurt, half something unnameable. Confirmation? Worry? I'm painfully aware that we are playing with fire, that one day the dream will end and we will have to face what we have wrought, but I do not take pleasure in his unhappiness. I am not Father.

For a moment, I think he will be angry with me for touching him, even with his permission, but then he softens, as my fingers rub circles into his skin. I wonder at how it must feel, to crave affection so badly that it hurts, only to snap back when it is freely given, because unconditional love simply cannot exist. Because people have ulterior motives, and animals do not. But in the safety of animals, there is always something lost, some confirmation that can only be given by a person. What a contradiction, to crave what does not, cannot—must not—exist. How strange that we are the perfect inverse of each other: I never knew love until I was twelve and Riff came into my life, while he didn't know it after Snark—or perhaps, couldn't recognize it, because it was not Father's.

I brush away some dampened hair from his forehead, as I have done for Mary, feeling his momentary recoil. Unsure how to bridge this divide between us, I pause, sensing his worry that he will spend the next month in bed, helpless and alone. That this will be only the beginning of a prolonged sickness that will kill him in the end. This uncertainty pains me, for I do not know what to say, and the idea of losing the only person who knows what it means to be Father's child frightens me. I do not want to be alone in this terrible knowledge. I suppose it's selfishness, then, that binds us, his selfishness of wanting to be cared for and mine of wanting to be understood.

All of a sudden, I am painfully aware of how old and weary I feel, in my constant anticipation of death, but it is all that I have known. Against all my resolve, the hot tears come too easily, and he just watches me, unreadable. I start to shake from my overwhelming grief, and something moves across his face.

"Come now," he starts, slightly uneasy. "What are you carrying on about? If I die, who will make you suffer in a future of endless despair, and if you die, whose organs will I covet?"

His perfectly deadpan statement stuns me for a moment, before I begin to laugh, curled up as I am. Morbid, indeed. Strange as it is, this must be his attempt to comfort me, and I'm not sure what it means that he has decided that I'm deserving of morbid comfort. (Or is it my organs?) How surreal. I suppose tomorrow, I'll awake on a vivisection table, with half my organs lovingly pickled and named. But love without danger has always been meaningless to me.

"I won't spoonfeed you, you know," I say, fumbling for some semblance of our old, antagonistic relationship, unsure of how I feel about being comforted.

He rolls his eyes. "What a pity."

Notes:

More homoerotic hurt/comfort. My fav trope. It might help to think of this as a collection of my favorite tropes, and nothing more. If you've read this far, you have my eternal love. Your feedback is always cherished.