"What in the name of God did you think you were doing!?"
Yang didn't so much scream or yell as she roared, her fists clenching in the front of Jaune's shirt and lifting him up off the ground, slamming him up against the corridor wall.
"You were supposed to look out for her! How could you let this happen?"
Her blood felt like molten lava flowing through her, she was so hot with rage. The idea that behind one of these doors, Ruby was lying unconscious, helpless...
She let the policeman down and shoved him away from her. Jaune went staggering back a number of steps.
"Tell me everything that happened. Your telegram just said that she'd been hurt in a fall. The attendant here said that there was an operation and that she hadn't woken up yet. Ether shouldn't keep her out that long. What's going on?"
"It...she's not unconscious from the anesthetic. Ruby chased the Phantom Gentleman out onto the roof of Sir Reginald's manor. He shot at her with some kind of Dust explosive. She jumped out of the way, but the shingles were a rotted mess. They tore loose and she went over the edge. It's over a forty-foot drop to the lawn. Even though she fell onto dirt and grass instead of the terrace, it was still a miracle she didn't break her neck. But she's been comatose ever since. The doctors...they say that's a bad sign, that the chance for recovery..."
He broke off, unable to finish putting words to the thought.
"But the attendant said there'd been an operation?"
Jaune swallowed, as if the words themselves were threatening to choke him.
"They had...the doctors had to trephine, to drain the blood and reduce the pressure. She would have...if we hadn't taken her straight here, if they hadn't operated...another couple of hours' delay..."
"You're telling me they had to cut a hole in Ruby's skull?"
Jaune could only nod.
"But she'll be okay, right? I mean, they got to it in time, before too much pressure built up—"
He shook his head.
"They don't know that, not yet. There could have been damage to the brain. She...she might never wake up," he forced out. "Or, if she does, there might be lingering effects. Her ability to control part of her body could be affected, or her senses might be damaged, or the effects might be mental..."
Yang though of boxers she'd known, ones who'd taken so much of a beating to their heads that they'd been rendered permanently punch-drunk. Slurred speech, blurred vision, shaking spasms, an inability to concentrate, mood swings and an inability to control their temper... Then came the sick twisting in her stomach followed as she though of those things happening to Ruby.
To her little sister.
And the even sicker feeling that having Ruby suffer like that would actually be one of the luckier outcomes.
"There's a considerable risk of infection as well," Jaune went on. "The doctors are treating her with the latest in Dust-enhanced anti-septic preparations, but..."
Yang's fists were clenched so tightly that if she hadn't been wearing gloves her nails would have drawn blood.
"No...damn it, no. I won't... I can't..."
She whirled and crashed her fist against the wall hard enough to rattle the plaster. Had it been any more solid, she'd have probably broken her hand; as it was her fingers throbbed with the pain.
But that was good, too. That kind of pain was real, it was tangible. She knew what to do about a sore hand. What had happened to Ruby, she was helpless to do anything about. Damaged flesh in her brain, infection-causing micro-organisms, these weren't enemies she could fight. She wasn't a doctor; she didn't have some kind of magic that could heal the sick. All she had was the fear and the rage, a rage that cycled right back around to Jaune as its most convenient target.
"And what the hell were you doing, Jaune, while Ruby was fighting the Phantom Gentleman alone on a rotting roof?" she shot at him.
"I tried to get up on the roof to help! I had to take the stairs while Ruby used some trick built into Steel Thorn to jump thirty feet straight up through a skylight!"
"So you just let her run off after the thief alone?"
"How was I supposed to stop her? What did you want me to do, Yang? I can't keep up with Ruby in a fight. I can't even watch her back if she won't let me stand with her!"
Her hand clenched around his cravat and she slammed him up against the wall again, right fist drawn back and cocked.
"God, Jaune, how useless are you? You're supposed to be this big-shot Scotland Yard inspector, and all you're good for is to stand around and watch while a teenaged girl all but dies trying to do your job for you?" Tears stung her eyes, hot and bright, splintering the burn of the gaslight in the hall.
"Don't you think I know that?" he screamed back. "Don't you think I know what a failure I am? I don't need you to tell me that; all I have to do is listen to anyone talk about my father or my grandfather, or any of the other dozens of Arcs. So if you're going to hit me for being useless to help Ruby, then go ahead and do it, but don't stand there and tell me about it like it's something I don't already know! Why do you think I came to you for help in the first place?"
The flare of energy drained out of his voice, and when he went on, it was with nothing but a dull misery.
"I knew the Phantom Gentleman would be too much for three policemen to handle. I told my superiors, and they didn't care. So I came to you, and you didn't believe me either. And Ruby did try to help, and look at what it got her. I told you, and you laughed at how funny and interesting the Gentleman was and you let Ruby go." He lifted his head and looked her square in the eyes. "I failed to help her, but at least I was there to try."
With a wordless cry, Yang let her fist explode forward, but it didn't strike flesh and bone, instead hammering into the wall a bare inch from Jaune's head. It left a depression in the plaster; dust floated down from the cracks radiating out from the point of impact.
The tears were streaming down her face, now, hot and bitter.
"I was trying to give you a chance," she choked out.
"Give...me a chance?"
"To catch the thief on your own. To bring the notorious Phantom Gentleman to justice. To show your bosses, the papers, hell, show you that Jaune Arc of Scotland Yard is a force to be reckoned with. If I'd gone with you, it would have been all about me. You're pretty, but I look better on the front page of a newspaper than you do. That's why I didn't agree to go with you."
"But Ruby came with me. How is that any different?"
"Ruby isn't a licensed huntress. It's not a job for her, just helping a friend. And she's already in disgrace with the ton. She'd insist you and the police take the credit, 'cause Dad would be furious if she made a public fuss, even for doing a good thing."
"I didn't realize—I...I'm so sorry—"
She uncurled his fingers from his cravat.
"Did Ruby ever tell you about how I taught her to swim?"
"No."
"She was seven. We were out at Dad's country estate, and there was this pond. I liked to go fishing on it in a boat with a couple of the bods from the stables, and I could tell Ruby wanted to go, too, but she was too scared of the boat to ask.
"So I threw her into the pond."
"You...threw her in?"
"And when she started floundering, I pulled her out, made sure that she didn't have any water in her lungs or anything, and pitched her back in again."
"Sounds like what my dad did to teach me."
"By the third try, she was dog-paddling, and she hasn't been scared of water ever since. She also dumped a pitcherful from the washbasin over me from the second-floor landing that afternoon in revenge, but fair's fair."
"So that's what you were doing? Tossing me alone into this case so I'd learn to swim?"
"But I was stupid, and now Ruby... With the pond, I was in control. I knew how deep it was, that I could pull Ruby out whenever I had to, that if there was any trouble I could make it right. I didn't know any of that about your case. I didn't know about the house. I thought the culprit was some bored gentleman doing this for a lark, not a cold-blooded killer. And I wasn't there to fix things if they went wrong."
"Ruby didn't know any of that, either."
"You asked for me. You asked me to help you, and I let her go in my place." She sucked in air in a deep, ragged breath. "It's my fault, not yours. I was angry at you because...because it gave me someone to blame besides myself. I'm sorry for that." She paused, then added hesitantly, "I didn't hurt you, did I?"
He grinned sheepishly.
"My head's thick enough to be bounced off a wall or two. Heck, Yang, I got worse than that tonight fighting the Phantom's henchwomen. One of them; Ruby beat the other one. Actually, she helped distract mine, too."
"That's my little sis," she managed a smile back, though it vanished at once. "Can we see her?"
"I think so."
Jaune went over to one of the numbered room doors on the opposite side of the corridor; he turned the knob and they went inside, and the sick fear rose up inside Yang once again.
Ruby wasn't a big girl; where Yang took after their father, her younger sister had the petite form that pictures of her mother showed. In the starched white sheets of the metal-frame hospital bed, though, she looked positively tiny. Her head was swathed in bandages, and there were more bandages and splints on her right arm and leg as well, the right leg being elevated off the bed in a sling.
"What's all this? Broken bones from the fall?"
Jaune nodded.
"That's right. It was..." He pulled out his policeman's notebook. "Right tibia, right fibula, right ulna, right radius, a couple of bones in her right ring finger and pinky, and four fractured ribs. None of the breaks were anything to worry about, they didn't think, and should all heal cleanly, if..."
The acrid scent of carbolic stung her nostrils. The hospital was obviously an adherent of Lister's principles for reducing the transmission of infection. That was a good sign. At least it helped reduce one of Ruby's risks.
I ought to have expected it, Yang thought. Jaune Arc wasn't the best guy in a fight, but he did fine in other ways. He'd have thought of things like this and made sure to get Ruby to the best possible care. Which made Yang feel even more like a heel for taking it out on him, especially given that she damn well knew how he felt about not being the kind of person who could have protected Ruby in a fight.
Not that Ruby was supposed to need protecting, anyway, but the way things were supposed to be, the way they were, and the way a big sister felt about them were three different things.
"God, Ruby, you've got to get better, you've just got to," she whispered. She reached out for the girl's left hand, lying limp on the bedclothes, then hesitated, wondering if she was supposed to touch her at all, then curling her fingers around Ruby's and giving them a squeeze. "I don't know if you can even tell we're here, sis, but I..." She shook her head, choking off whatever she might have been thinking of saying. How could she apologize to someone who couldn't even hear her? How could she offer reassurances where there were none to be had?
Yang could only pray for Ruby's recovery and know that, regardless of whether she did come back healthy and fine, never woke again, or anywhere in between, it had nothing to do with her. Her promise to keep Ruby safe, to always be there to fix what was too much for her little sister to handle, was broken either way. There wasn't any atonement she could make.
"You'd better wake up, little sis," she murmured softly, "because you have to kick my ass for screwing this up, you got that?"
There was no response, no movement of the comatose girl's fingers or flicker of her eyelids, just the slight, steady rise and fall of her chest with her breathing. No magic. No miracles. Whatever happened, it would be because of the severity of the injuries, the skill of the doctors, and the natural processes of Ruby's body healing.
There was nothing Yang could do.
Nothing.
She looked up at Jaune and saw for the first time that his eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, and realized that she wasn't the only one to shed tears for Ruby, just that his had been spent before she'd even gotten there. Yang didn't mention it; she knew he'd hate for her to draw attention to anything about him that could be thought "unmanly." Someone who could shed tears for Ruby wasn't someone Yang wanted to embarrass.
It explained more, too, his bewildered helplessness, his dull recital of facts except when lashing out at Yang in response to her own accusations. He was just...spent. Caught like her in the realization that they were helpless, useless in the face of what had happened. That there was, simply, nothing that was in their power to do, the huntress and the policeman.
Wait.
"The huntress and the policeman," she said aloud.
"Come again?"
"There's nothing we can do for Ruby now but hope and pray. We're not healers."
"Yeah, I know." He ran his hand through his already tousled hair, not making it significantly more or less unkempt.
"There's something we can do, though."
"There is?"
"We can catch the bloody bastard who did this to her so that when Ruby wakes up we can give her the Phantom-bloody-Gentleman's head on a silver platter."
She didn't realize that she'd said when rather than if, and Jaune didn't mention it.
"How are we going to do that? The police have been chasing him for months without finding a trace."
"Sure, because he's been so far ahead of you every time. This theft was different. He had to throw a girl off a roof to get away." The sick feeling twisted in her belly as she said it, but it had to be said. "A man who's that desperate isn't going to be able to clean up after himself."
"Well, Ruby, Sir Reginald, and I all got a good look at him, so we have a description at last. Or maybe you meant doing something like that Sherlock Holmes guy in the stories, analyzing the bits left over from the Gentleman's smoke bomb, to find out what he made it from and where he could have bought the materials? I wish we had a laboratory that could do that. But no, there's nothing useful. Even those freaky twins got a way while we were looking after Ruby, Sir Reginald, and Edwin. When I sent the constables to get hold of them, they were already gone."
"Smoke bomb? Twins? What are you talking about?"
"Well, we were about to jump in and grab him when he threw a smoke bomb at us. By the time the cloud dispersed enough for us to see, he'd climbed up a rope through the skylight and was just pulling the rope up behind him. That's when Ruby did that thing with her weapon and launched herself up after him. She asked me how heavy I was; I guess she didn't have enough power to pull me along with her."
Yang took the information in without comment. She could have asked for more detail, but knew if she did, it would just drag her back to what had happened next, and dwelling on that couldn't help anyone, least of all Ruby.
"And the twins? Who were they?"
"Henchwomen of the Phantom Gentleman, I guess. They broke into the house as a diversion, to get us running after them while the Gentleman himself—" He broke off, scowling. "Dammit, I'm not calling him that any more, no matter how he signs his notes. Phantom, all right, with his fancy tricks, but not Gentleman, not after what he did. He's just a thug with a nice outfit and snappy dialogue."
"Damn right," Yang agreed.
"I wish we could tell the papers, so the people could know the kind of person he really is, so they'd stop cheering him on. I can't drag Ruby's name through the public eye, though, or else maybe we could finally get people to take him seriously and Scotland Yard would give me the resources I need to actually catch him!"
"It doesn't matter, Jaune."
"Huh?"
Yang clenched her fist.
"There's not going to be enough of him left for you to worry about when I've finished with him."
Prudence might have suggested that she not openly say that in front of a police official. Yang and prudence had never really been on speaking terms even during the best of times, which this clearly was not.
Jaune didn't say one word in opposition, though. And while his reasons might not be as strong as Yang's, he did have more of them, which had to count for something.
"I feel bad about asking, but I need you to do something for me."
"What?"
"Don't tell Dad about this, or Goodwitch."
"What? Why?"
"If she finds out, she'll tell him. And if he finds out, he'll come rushing back to London to be with Ruby. And if that happens, I won't be able to go after the Phantom Gentleman without causing a huge kerfuffle. I'll come up with a cover story for you about why Ruby's not home."
He obviously didn't like the idea of withholding information about a girl's injury from her family, but he wasn't going to stand in Yang's way.
"Still, I'm surprised that he'd use lackeys," she said. "I thought part of the whole Phantom Thief routine was using tricks and smarts to take the loot, not an army of thugs. Though it being women is different. Females in the violence line tend to rise to the top or wash out completely; you know how it is."
Jaune nodded at her.
"I figure that those two fit his methods right enough. They were almost like circus performers, dressed up in short skirts like Ruby wears, only with a lot of fancy frills and feathers, one all in while and one in red—"
"Hey, wait," Yang cut him off. "Did one of 'em have something like claws, and the other blades on her boots?"
"Yeah, the red one had the claws. You know who those two are?"
"Sure, they're the Malachite twins. They're Junior Xiong's top enforcers. Junior runs the Kodiak Club."
"Yeah, I know, remember? The Yard's tried to close it down three times, but the right palms keep getting crossed and our cases just fade away. But Junior can't be the Phantom. I've seen him before. He's big and dark-haired, like if Constable Burns was Chinese. Though you don't know Burns, so that's not really helpful, is it? But there's no way Junior is the thief." He gave her a quick description of the Phantom Gentleman, and Yang had to agre that it definitely hadn't been Junior Xiong.
"Besides, it's been years since Junior got his own hands dirty. He came up the streets the hard way and figures that doing things himself is a sign of weakness. And he's the last guy I know who'd do something like prance around like a simple burglary was a stage performance even if he figured he needed the money."
"But I thought you said the Malachite twins worked for him?"
She nodded.
"They do, no question about it. Which means one of two things: either the Phantom works for Junior—"
"No way. There's no way somebody with this kind of ego is someone else's lackey. If he was just stealing stuff, okay, I could see that, but not with the whole Phantom routine, sending out challenges, playing it up to the press. That's not somebody else's act...though I suppose it would be an interesting scheme, to hire an actor to make it look like that. But you said that wasn't how Junior operated?"
"Right. So if it isn't that, then Junior's renting his people out. That's how he got off the streets and into an office, by trading in information."
Jaune snapped his fingers.
"That's how he learned the layout of the house, maybe even that Sir Reginald didn't keep the Star of the Tsang in the safe like he claimed he did."
"I'm thinking that he's branched out into providing other services as well. Need a cracksman or a nobbler? He could put you in touch with the right people, for a fee."
"Then he must know who the Phantom is."
She let go of Ruby's hand.
"Sounds like I'm going to be paying a visit to the Kodiak Club."
"What makes you think Junior will give away anything about his clients?"
"What makes you think I'm going to give him a choice?"
~X X X~
A/N: I hope that any doctors or medical students in the reading audience will forgive any errors made in my description of Victorian treatment of an epidural hematoma and the actual symptoms and prognosis. Yang's story of how she taught Ruby to swim (and thence, the whole plot point about how she let Jaune and Ruby go after Roman without her) is based on a quote Barbara Dunkelman, her VA, made about her.