for ambitious_woman The Bastille

[quitehomoerotic]

Relaxed.

Relaxed was something Jack Harkness rarely felt. In fact the concept of relaxation seemed an alien one to him. But yet here he was, that was how he felt. The muscles in his body were looser than they'd felt in far too long, and pains that had held there through stress and worry had, at least for now, melted away to nothingness.

It was morning, and he opened his eyes to a world he'd come to find he liked. A place that while it was nowhere that he belonged, he'd been surprised to discover that there was a space for him. A welcoming space with a welcoming face. He wasn't sure if it was something he deserved but for once, for a time, he wasn't going to worry about that.

When he woke, beside him he saw Reinette sound asleep. It made him smile and he pressed a delicate and small kiss to the skin at her shoulder. He stayed there a moment, just smiling and watching, and he whispered to her, "I'll be right back."

And so he rose from the bed. His intent was to find food. He'd take a morning walk, just a short one in the pleasant summer morning that he could see filtering through beyond the window, and then he'd venture to the kitchens and procure themselves something.

His clothes were near, and he dressed in them, item by item and then his coat (as if he'd go anywhere without it), and out into the corridors and halls of Versailles he went.

He wasn't on his guard, of course, why should he be? Short of clockwork what need he worry about right now? And really, should he encounter clockwork, he'd merely turn it off. No, here he felt happy, he felt safe, and so that guard he had learnt to keep up, was down.

And so it was his downfall.

He found his way to the rear gardens, nodding politely to footmen on his way (people that usually he made no effort to even acknowledge). But they had noticed him. In fact they had noticed him long before he noticed them. They had been noticing him for quite some time. They had noticed him in gardens and they had noticed him behind closed doors. And Jack had no idea.

And he wasn't prepared.

Entirely unprepared for the troupe of guards that met him in the gardens. It was as though they had been waiting, as though they had sought him out (and they had, of course). And as strong as Jack could be, he was not prepared, and so he could do nothing when he was met with a blow to the head, and another blow that knocked him to the ground. Another and another until he felt metal shackles on his wrists held behind his back and a tear of fabric between his lips to quiet his shouts.

And he was taken away.

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[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette arose early that morning, if only because she still had difficulty sleeping. She was hardly dressed before Louis sent a missive requesting she receive him, which of course there was no question if they would. But the played the game, between them. And they played it well.

For a man that always heard yes, she knew quite well one of the things that drew him to her was the possibility she might say 'no'. Until, of course, the time she had actually said it. That still did not sit well between them, even if they made a fine show of otherwise. But eventually knew was confident it would fade, even with Louis. Especially with Louis. He was far too distractable in the physical sense.

He came early as promised, it must have been immediately after morning mass. Normally Louis avoided such collisions of what was generally viewed as sin and soul. But he came, none the less. And Reinette pressed their coffee in the usual way as they discussed the events of court and the comings and goings there.

Eventually talk turned to her daughter, whom Louis was extremely fond of. He mentioned the day, then. That it was sure to be a lovely one. And even though Reinette was not one to be so quietly manipulated she had to agree to both of his points. And so mother and daughter spent the better part of the morning walking and in the company of her favorite fat duck.

When she returned, it was to news of a commotion in the halls. A man seen very close to her rooms. With a sharp gaze she pressed questions to people that would never meet her eyes.

Did he wear a coat? No, hardly that.

What of something on his wrist? No, nothing like that.

Was he attractive, with dark hair? Never. Bruised and stinking and surely just another peasant gone missing.

Reinette thought of the country baker that had lost himself in the halls of Versailles just the year before and frowned.

When she finally saw Louis again, she pressed the same questions towards him. He merely laughed, unconcerned.

He was gone six months before, Reinette reminded herself quietly. It had yet to even be six days.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack wasn't afraid of pain, it was a fact that seemed to unnerve his captors. He came to after being beaten again to find himself again within the darkened walls of the Bastille. It hadn't quietened him though, and he shouted and raged, throwing insults and sarcasm at all who would listen. Still though, they were instructed to stay quiet and so they did, leaving him with nothing but frustration and annoyance at his being ignored.

He was met with punishment, again direct instructions from the King. And he was taken and flogged. Though they said nothing, he could see in the eyes of his captors how uncomfortable it made them that while it hurt him, it didn't seem to effect him. But then they had no idea what he'd been through. They had no idea truly who he was.

It all changed after that though. A fear that couldn't help but be displayed when he saw that they no longer intended to take him to the cell in which he'd inhabited before. No, they took him somewhere much worse.

It was into the bowels of the building that he was lead. An area that it seemed less used, or at least forgotten. No natural light there, and a smell that could be realised from quite a distance. It smelt of death and decay and rotting waste.

Jack didn't like the darkness, not when he couldn't remove himself from it. He didn't like enclosed spaces. His experiences of being buried alive and encased in concrete will do that to a guy. And so when he saw where he was to be put, the only feeling he could display was panic.

There was a grate on the floor, barely visible in the candlelit halls, and it was lifted to reveal a small set of steps down which Jack was all but dragged. The ground was barely that, water logged from the moat outside and infested with rats and waste. He fought the captors but with his weakness from the last few days compounded with the fact he'd been flogged, he had no energy to fight back.

And so he was shackled by his ankle to a chain to the wall and he was left there. In that hole of dirt and mud, with no light and little space. The grate above was closed and the door ahead locked with a heavy slam.

And there, in that space, Jack would stay.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

One week became two.

Two weeks became three.

Three weeks became a month.

And through it all there remained no sign of Jack, no indication of when he might return. A though to which she countered to herself again and again? That he as under no obligation to do so.

She told herself he had not intended to. That is planning their next trip together he had unintentionally stumbled across someone that genuinely required his assistance rather than merely his company. That it had indeed been his assistance she required the day she met Jack was studiously ignored.

Or perhaps, she considered, his path had managed to cross the Doctor's. Despite his certainty it would not. Perhaps they were together even now.

The least flattering whisper simply that he found someone or someplace that amused him more. That Reinette did not allow herself to linger on. But the words had been thought, and could not ever fully go away.

But there remained other, pressing matters.

She knew she had been distant the last months at court, and that her very position there was threatened because of it. Exhausting thought it may be, and the illness it would bring her too inevitable? Reinette could do no less than conquer it.

It was time to do so. To redefine her role and to challenge everything that was understood.

Again.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Time passed, though Jack didn't know how much. Weeks, he thought, though there was no way to gauge it. There was no way to even measure the passing of the day. No light and no moon. No window to see either. No natural air. It felt, to him, as though he'd been taken from time and left drifting in the void.

The summer warmth outside the Bastille helped things breed within it. A healthy supply of rats and enough waste for them to feed on. There was no dignity in it, in the small confined spaces where Jack was all but forgotten. His only measure of time was the bucket that would be lowered with water and stale bread. It seemed to him that was roughly every two days or so, though even that was imprecise and not accurate to use as any sort of marker.

There were few people that moved about above, and so calling or shouting would do little good. It was a forgotten little hole in which he'd been put, and he had no choice but to wait it out. It wasn't something he could escape from, even Jack Harkness had his limitations.

Outside, in Paris, life continued, and a month passed and so did another, and Jack hadn't moved from his hole.

The weather cooled and so did the water that pooled in the cell, it froze on cold nights, and froze around him, cooling and hurting his body. His body that already had become weak and worn. It hurt to sit and hurt more to stand. The shackles on his ankles that had once been tight were now loose and wore at his skin when they touched it.

Contact with the rats and the waste had infected him and given sores to his skin that stank and grew. And all he had, was the hope of a piece of bread every few days.

That and knowledge. Ah yes, he had knowledge. Because, if nothing else came, the revolution would. He knew that. Years, yes, and a great deal of them. But he had nothing but time, of course, and he could lie to himself and pretend it was fine. And he would get out.

It was all a matter of time.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Another month passed, this far more quickly.

Another and another and then two more still. Five months since Jack Harkness pressed a kiss to her shoulder and disappeared.

There was a practical acceptance now.

There had been no conversations and there had been no promises. Jack owed her nothing more than he had already shared and really, truly perhaps it was a gentle reminder of the first lesson Reinette learned. That everything, especially what matters, is fleeting.

As the fifth month stretched on, Reinette could not ignore the quiet awareness that crept upon her or fail to mark the occasion. A year since they met on a rare mild morning of early winter. Time was confused now, their story no longer so linear. But she could not help but consider this the beginning of their time together.

It was much, much colder a year to the day when she stood next to the tree and watched it. As if even now he might reappear. He did not, and the only conclusion that Reinette drew as she returned to Versailles was that is would be a long, hard winter. She could feel it.

Even the necklace she still wore out of sight, her lone nod to sentimentality seemed chilled. It no longer sat against her skin as warmly as it once had.

She fully threw herself into the activities at court now. There was the school, or course. The porcelain factory and patterns to be approved. She sponsored several new artists and slowly, deliberately become so invaluable to Louis politically that he could never think to send her away.

It was not to be considered.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

It took five and a half months for him to die.

Five and a half months and it wasn't the starvation that took him, though it was a factor that took its toll. But it was a disease; something transmitted by the rats that took solace in the dark and the damp as the weather changed. Something that had got into his system through a cut and infected his blood. It had killed him within days.

But then he woke.

He woke, lying in a pool of his own waste, and his body was his again, muscles restored and body renewed. But it was no escape. It was no way out because there was none. He had found for him a bucket of water there that must have sat for a day at least.

Alive again, and so the cycle continued. It seemed to take less time for him to weaken now, his muscles soon wasting and stomach soon becoming starved. It was harder to fight it now, and as the months past, another two, three, he lost himself to a delirium brought on by his surroundings.

He ceased to be recognisable as himself, and a large part of him was glad at that. His hair grew and became matted and dirty, and his stubble grew to a beard, unhampered and unruly.

And he began to learn when it was night. He knew from the cold. The ice in the water and the pain it would bring. And that was the cycle of his days.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

She was right about the winter, Reinette soon discovered. Though she took little pleasure in it. The season was especially vicious, and ultimately she knew it was only a matter of time before she fell ill.

Reinette pushed herself too hard, she knew that. She did not ask, rather demanded too much of a body that had ultimately failed her since the first time she fell ill at school at the age of seven. But if illness was inevitable the at the very least she could exhibit fierce control over the time she was not.

It was sudden. Sometime after her birthday and when the weather was its most bitter. It brought with it the familiar fever and migraines, Louis' concerned but distant presence and the familiar parade of doctors and their bleedings. It was two months before she was fully recovered. Two months before she could stare down the court and their whispers and remind them she was not yet gone.

At least, she reminded herself, spring would soon come.

She still thought of Jack, more than she might have thought so many months removed. Reinette was practical, and knew that while time did little to heal most wounds it was capable of diluting them. It was how she filled the space between the Doctor. How, when she told Louis their liaison must end she could speak confidently to him that he would be all right. That soon he would not even recall the force of his reaction now.

Thus it hurt less to consider now where he might be, and what he might be doing.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack stood on a roof of an office building in Cardiff. He looked out towards the bay in the near distance, and the Bristol Channel out beyond that. The breeze was cool against his face and he could smell that smell, a scent that was distinctly Cardiff. His city. His home. But the calm was displaced by a cloud up ahead. A cloud that appeared from nowhere and darkened the sky. It rained down until around him it fell like streaks of black and he was locked in darkness.

And then he opened his eyes, and he was again in that cell, in that hole. Alone.

The nightmares came more often. Twisted dreams that confused his mind and made him forget where he was. They weren't always bad, sometimes they took him somewhere, a moment in a memory that faded as he recalled the truth of his location. It didn't seem to be always with sleep, but they were waking and lucid and he wondered what was real and what not.

It had been ten months.

Another month after that and someone finally came down. They held a candle and the light of it burned into his eyes. He shrunk back from it, balled and huddled into the corner in which he'd barely moved from, but for to struggle to get the food that would sometime be brought.

It had seemed to shock the captors to find he was still alive. He'd pleaded then, asked for answers or just to leave, but it had been met with laughs and taunts and it seemed to fuel their urge to take him for what he hadn't had since he'd arrived. He was flogged again then and the whole experience was blurred and marked only by the sting of pain.

They had placed him then, bleeding and sore, back in the hole. Again, he'd been left.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Spring came again, as it always did, and Reinette welcomed it.

There was a particular need for it this year, as she still slowly recovered from her illness. Her hair and skin refreshed by the sun. Her gowns began to fit as they should once more.

There could be no doubting her influence now. And those that thought the dissolution of her physical relationship with Louis would prove her downfall were proven wrong. If anything their bonds were now stronger. For Louis could be an indifferent ruler at his worst, and he needed her passions and attentions. He might argue when she exhausted herself, but never once did he actually ask that she stop.

And then it was a year since she last saw Jack.

An entire year.

It was all too easy to mark the day. Reinette had always been conscious of time since her childhood and the first night the fireplace spun. She was aware of it now. One year to the day since the one they spent together.

She found herself walking the labyrinth, imagining how this one was different for him than the last. She wondered if he was happy. Because if he recognized it or not, he deserved that.

No matter how he might argue with her.

The thought was nearly enough to make her smile.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Thirteen months.

That's how long it had been. How long since Jack was last free, since he'd spent that memorable day with Reinette. It seemed like lifetimes ago to him now. It was all he could do to remember, but he did. That's how he filled his time by sinking back into his own mind. He remembered. He remembered the times, small, he remembered the people that were gone. The thought of the Doctor, of his team, of Ianto. He thought of all the people he'd loved, all gone now.

And he thought of Reinette. He hoped she was well, hoped she didn't resent him for disappearing as he did.

He hoped.

But hope waned, because it became harder to see through, harder to have any clarity at all.

He was ill again. He had been for a long time, but it was consuming him now. He didn't move, not from the place against the corner. Should food or water be delivered he barely had the energy to retrieve it. His body began to shut down. He'd have died already if not for some inbuilt ability to stay alive a little longer. The universe taunting him that little bit more.

But it could only go so far, and 8 months after he'd last died, he was dying again. Slowly, slowly, he started to give up.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

It was summer now.

Hot and festering and disease ran rampant in the poorer streets of Paris. Louis would not be persuaded to go near her for some time. Since he was a child he carried an overwhelming fear of death, which made it all the more difficult for him to comprehend Reinette's soft acceptance of it.

What would he think now, to know she could name the precise day?

It occurred to her often she had never pressed Jack to answer how. She supposed she never might now. She did not think it required all that much imagination.

Versailles never managed the seasons well. For all its beauty it was poorly conceived. The winters were bitter and the summer all but unbearable. A cool bath had done little to bring comfort, and even in her simplest, lightest gown of muslin there was no denying the oppressive heat. Sweat caught beneath her stays, impossible to reach. Reinette had little choice but to ignore it.

She retired to her rooms for the most oppressive heat of the afternoon in an attempt to avoid it. Reinette was there for several minutes before a bundle of papers left sitting at her writing desk caught her attention.

Curious, she moved to examine them.

The writ she recognized, the familiar seal cut into the wax. The accompanying note, left in an anonymous hand. And the description of a man. With each page her breath stilled until there was no air left at all.

Nothing left at all but a single, carrying word.

Jack.

She lifted her skirts and ran to Louis chambers, past courtiers and guards. Not caring for the sight she made.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

The only indication that Jack had to alert him he'd been kept for over year was that heat had returned. It made the air around him fragrant with the stench, and though it was the norm to him now, he was dimly aware of it, somewhere in the back of his mind, that part of his mind that still tried.

There was little of it now, trying. He lay against the corner wall simply because he could do little else. He couldn't move, his muscles wasted, his eyes barely saw in the darkness. He still wore the same clothes with which he'd been thrown in over a year ago. Or at least what once were clothes. They were worn and torn and crusted with waste and dried blood where months ago he'd been flogged.

He was a shell of a man he once was. Haggard and hollow both inside and out. He hoped now for the death that he knew must be near, just to rid himself for a while of the pain in his muscles and in everything he held.

It seemed a long time coming.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Louis was far from alone when Reinette entered his rooms, but he knew enough of her to all but immediately dismiss his advisers. They left, eyes wide and gossip already on their tongue. As if she had not already made enough of it.

Then they were alone. Then, the words came.

Masks were for hallways and ballrooms, not for here. Every bit of her distress was evidenced on Reinette's features. She did not have the thought to hide it as she ignored the gentle familiarity of the space and the man before her. There was no comfort in it now.

Indeed there was a great deal less. Words like hurt and distrust came far too easily. The writ. His seal. His signature.

Jack.

What had he done?

A misplaced glance at a truck in the far corner sent Reinette there. She knew people and their thoughts far too well not to follow the gaze. She pulled it open only to find a familiar coat. She wrapped it about her arms like armor only to discover something far more disturbing beneath. His wriststrap.

Whatever had been done to him, wherever he now was? There would have been no escape.

Reinette stood silently as Louis, now just as distressed at the sight of her reaction, fumbled through his words and his reasoning. A dance. Misplaced attentions. What could only be translated to Reinette's ears as damaged pride. Coldly she reminded him of all his other attentions, all the countless other women she had done nothing too other than a few sharply made opinions.

It was because of her. All that time, he watched.

It was all beyond ridiculous, and ----

His next mishandled confession left Reinette cold.

She moved to stand in the space Louis' next breath would come from. There was no mistaking her anger.

"You put him underground?"

What came next was a flurry of words and action. She demanded Louis write Jack's pardon then and there, informing him she would deliver it to the Bastille herself. He attempted to object, of course. But a few more well placed words brought him to silence.

And then she was in her carriage, two of Louis' strongest footmen following behind. She left him with no promises of when she would see him again, if at all.

They stared, at course, as she entered the guardhouse and demanded to be taken to Jack's location. There was no mistaking the king's seal. They attempted to object when her intention to follow them down into his cell was made clear. It only took a look to silence them now.

Reinette climbed further into the darkness, gaze already searching for Jack.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack barely opened his eyes now. It seemed to hurt too much to do even that. His body had been giving up, yes, and so now his mind was doing the same. Continue for what? Shut down, it was best. Shut down and eventually things would change. If there were anything he could expect it would be that. Eventually, things would change.

Funny, he thought. He'd originally come here on a whim. He'd pressed a button and met a woman and set off a sequence of events he could have never predicted. Dizzying as his life was, and there was little he could do, he would always get involved and swept away. It was who he was. And he could have never expected it, that he'd be here, his name in papers and life twisted into history.

And so he lay, almost as though he were asleep, but he wasn't, he was in a state somewhere between life and death, but not close enough to death for it to sweep him away.

But then, one day, one day like any other, things changed.

There was activity above, he was dimly aware of it. Aware too of the candlelight that accompanied the commotion. Small, yes, but given he'd had none it hurt and burned into his eyes. He huddled further into the corner, lifting his arm as well he could to shield his face.

He heard the grate as it was lifted and heard the footsteps as they came down towards him, and he was scared now as to what might be coming.

Not for a moment did he notice who was there.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

It was difficult, the four of them all pressed into such a small space.

No, no she though as Reinette swallowed down the bile that sat full in her throat as the stench threatened to overtake her. There might as well been three of them. Because there was very little of Jack left, not as she remembered him.

It was Jack, yes.

She was a certain of it. But only pieces remained. Broken and pressed as far as they might be against the ancient, decaying walls. As she closed the space between them she could feel the floor move beneath her feet, wet and rot soaking up them hem of her gown. Something ran across one shoe, but she paid it no mind.

There was more clothing than there was Jack, though there was hardly anything left of either. Filth and decay had reached up to fill in the wounds and holes where parts of him had simply seemed to fall away. The nails on his feet yellow and curled. And his hands ---

It was only Jack's eyes that gave clear evidence of who he once was, and those now shuttered against her too. Fleeing the light. His cheekbons were sharp enough to cut.

Reinette knelt to touch him then, carefully. As if she somehow might hold through will alone all the pieces that remained of him together. Even then she did not touch skin, but more filth. Her thumb moved carefully over his cheek.

"Jack."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack huddled as much as he could. He could feel the bones in his body shifting and moving and rubbing against where there should be muscle to protect it.

He wasn't strong enough, he wasn't prepared enough for this, for whatever this might be.

And there was someone there; he could see through the rough pained blinks he took. He didn't know of course who it was. He couldn't. That sort of recognition was past him now. His mind wasn't so sharp, muddled and confused from lack of clarity.

He was touched and it hurt. He tried to pull back. His face didn't feel like his, heavy with a beard and hair that seemed to matt together and be one.

But then he was spoken to. For the first time, he was spoken to. His name.

And so he made an effort to look at the voice that delivered it. He knew that voice, he recognised it.

And he recognised her.

But while he may have wanted to reply, he didn't have the energy in him for it. And so he merely looked.

Reinette.

He suspected it was another dream.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette could feel him attempt to pull away. She battled the ache in her chest at the realization he was unable to manage even that. For the moment she withdrew her hand, giving him what he desired.

But then his gaze flickered towards her, however briefly. And there was recognition there. Reinette was certain of it. It was not her own misplaced guild or need manifested in the look they exchanged. He recognized her.

It was enough.

"Jack."

Softly, just for him.

She closed her eyes then, stilling herself for what was to come. This would not be easy. Reinette reached to turn the key that would release Jack's shackles, carefully removing them from his skin. She whispered her orders then, still curt and clear as already the two men were carrying his form between them. Up the narrow steps and through the prison towards her waiting carriage.

For a moment, only that, she was left alone in the cell Jack had been banished too. Already the dark and the stench and the isolation was closing over her. He had been asked to survive it for fourteen months.

How had he managed?

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

It wasn't a dream. It took a moment or two for that to be fully realised, but it was. Perhaps it was the fact she'd touched him, and then compounded with the fact she'd moved away. The absence was just as painful as the touch had been in the first place.

He tried again to talk then, but he managed nothing but a small noise; a garbled ache in the back of his throat. It sounded like it could have been her name.

But then events swept up around him. He was lifted and it was a searing pain. He couldn't concentrate then as he was taken away. The hold of the men might have been gentle but Jack couldn't feel that past the pain. It hurt far too much to tell anything else.

And with the ache of being moved came the searing intensity of the light. It was only candlelight at first, but that was harsh enough, and there was nothing in him that was prepared for the natural light of the day outside as they moved him from the building. There was a breeze that touched Jack's skin and dimly he tried to feel it, to taste it, but it was all so overwhelming it became hard to do.

He was put then inside a carriage, and immediately a blanket was laid over him. It had felt like a trial, just to be moved, and he shuddered and shook. Merely sitting as he did seemed to hurt.

But it was over, he hoped. It was over.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

The light was bright as Reinette returned to her carriage, and she could not fathom what that meant for Jack. She saw him placed carefully in her carriage and a blanket placed about him. Then she personally drew the shades.

The stench they both wore was already filly the enclosed space.

It took the greatest restraint not order the horses sprung to see them carried to her Paris home at the greatest speed. But a single glance at Jack told Reinette that would not be possible.

That this journey would be difficult enough as it stood.

There was traffic on the roads, and Reinette held her breath with every stop and start of the carriage. Minutes stretched on far longer than they naturally should.

After several had passed she moved to the small amount of remaining bench at Jack's side, and placed a single hand on his blanket. Hoping it reached the man beneath.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

All about him was pain. His legs, his backside where it touched the seat, his eyes where the light had burned them, his muscles where they'd tried in some weak attempt to function only to be punished for their efforts.

The carriage darkened, he sensed that through his eyelids, and when the light had dimmed he risked cracking open his tired lids. He looked at her again then. Reinette at his side. His mind was slow to catch up with himself, but as it did it struck him how he must look. He knew, of course, how bad he felt, and how logically he must look. He couldn't bear for her to see him like this.

He flinched again at her touch, and it wasn't that he didn't want it, but that he hated to imagine her contaminating himself.

And try as he might, he had to say something.

"Don't," he managed, weak and barely there. Barely anything at all. And then weaker still, "Reinette."

And on that he started coughing. Coughing and wrenching his body. A body that couldn't cope with the journey.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Her breath caught as Jack spoke. Not only coherent but indicating he truly did recognize her.

"Do not what," Reinette feigned innocence neither of them were capable of in that moment. Not after everything had passed. But there was an edge to her tone that she could not help but home he could hear, that he could still somehow translate.

Jack could ask a great many things of her in that moment. But not to stop.

All that was set aside when he began to cough. Huge, wrenching gasps that Reinette feared would tear what little was left of him apart.

Pulling her skirts to one side Reinette dropped to her knees on the floor of the carriage so that he face was more even with Jack's. Even then she was reaching for the necklace that still rested about her chest.

She tugged the chair free, and placed it over Jack's neck. Logically she knew he could not die. She had witnessed it for herself. But she still could not bring herself to let it be like this. She fumbled with the pendant, frustrated when it did not immediately work as Jack promised.

But then something twisted. Released. And she could feel an intense heat wash over them both.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack's eyes hurt as he looked at her. That she had to see him like this, that she had to see him at all. He wanted to speak, he wanted to apologise and to say so many things. But he couldn't, he just didn't have the strength.

But then he felt her putting the chain about his neck. It hurt, the cool of the chain as it touched his neck through the mass of twisted hair. And then it turned, it changed.

He'd never expected to be the one on the receiving end of the use of this necklace. Just another way his life never went to plan. But he felt it. The warmth that had held within the necklace seemed to expand and erupt. It filled him completely, and the next breath he took was fuller. The ache in his body seemed to dull a little and the cloud inside his mind lifted and gave way to clarity.

When he looked at her now, he could see her.

And he could speak.

"How did you find out?" he asked, his voice still raw and worn, but there.

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

Reinette remained on the floor of the cabin, head tilted towards Jack as she watched the necklace do its work. Even through the refuse and the dirt and the things that now crawled over them both she could see the color of his skin strengthen. His body hold itself with more strength, no matter how small the difference.

Did the answer to his question matter? Just now?

Still her voice was low an edged. She could not deny him.

"Letters, delivered to my room. They simply appeared."

Her fingers reached to touch the blanket once more, and the edge in her voice thickened and grew more sharp.

"Louis did this to you."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"Yes," he said simply. She hadn't asked it as a question, that he knew, but still he felt as though he aught to confirm that he knew.

There was more to explain, of course, but that could wait. None of it mattered here and now.

"How long has it been?" he asked. There had been a time he'd roughly gauged by the temperature of the day, but as it went on he got more confused, and now here he was not knowing if it had been months or years. It all just meshed into one.

And then, before even a response could come, he spoke again.

"You shouldn't be near me like this."

[ambitious-woman.livejournal.com]

"Fourteen months," Reinette answered carefully.

It made it no better to hear the words said aloud, time that until not she had been silently counting internally. Her eyes searched what she could see of Jack's features for a reaction.

She had stood in that hole. She not could envision far too clearly what that must have meant.

Her hand remained on the blanket, though she added no further pressure. She could feel the carriage slowing, and knew they were near her home.

"Where, precisely, would you have me be?"

Whatever his answer, she had no intention of leaving.