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prose_alchemistTitle: The Nature of the Beast (4/7)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jordannamorgan
Permission to Archive: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Characters: Ensemble.
Setting: Following the episode "The Victorian Candidate".
Summary: Self-doubts haunt Phileas in the wake of his ordeal in Scotland.
Disclaimer: Jules and company belong to Talisman Crest. I’m just having fun with them.
The Foggs’ return to Shillingworth Magna was greeted by the household staff with the usual concern, and the usual polite pretenses of ignorance. Some matters had called them to Scotland—or so it had been said—and Mister Fogg had for a time taken gravely ill—or so they were told. No one believed it, but no one cared whether anyone believed it. That was the way of things. Besides, there was enough to be concerned about with the good master’s temperament—and not in the usual manner.
In the days following his return home, Mister Fogg did not once berate Passepartout, nor snap at any of the other servants, nor argue with his cousin. For the most part he isolated himself in his study, a common signal that he was in his cups. His mood would brighten just a little when he took meals with Miss Rebecca and his young French friend Master Jules, but apart from their company, he was lethargic and dispirited. Even the newspapers he had once religiously perused went untouched, the daily copies of the Times stacking up on the desk unread. Nothing appeared to entertain his interest.
Only at night would he grow restless. He would get up and walk about the house alone, now and again silently looking into the room of Miss Rebecca or Master Jules. Eventually Passepartout would find him, and without a word exchanged would take him unprotesting back to his bed—yet in the morning he would be tired, and would drowse by himself in his study once again.
When approached about what was ailing him, Mister Fogg would simply give a weak smile and admit that he had not been feeling quite himself. Indeed, truer words were never spoken, for the volatile, capricious Phileas Fogg had become quiet, docile, and entirely non-confrontational—in short, a total stranger. And while this mild demeanor was novel at first, it was simply too unnatural to be comfortable.
Perhaps that had something to do with it when, early on the morning of the fifth day, Passepartout managed to blow off the door of his workshop.
It all happened quite "accidentably", according to the valet, and may or may not have involved the complicity of Master Jules; that part was never quite clear afterward. To be fair, the sound of the blast had brought Mister Fogg at a run from his study. Finding Passepartout and Master Jules in the clearing smoke, however, he had taken each man by the arm and looked him over, with all the symptoms of an unbearable sort of anxiousness.
"Are you alright?" he had asked, with a tension in his voice that was decidedly not anger.
"Fine," Master Jules had mumbled in reply, as Passepartout stared at the floor, nodded sheepishly, and shuffled his feet.
"I see." Mister Fogg’s tension faded to a peculiar resigned neutrality, and after casting a glance around the room, he concluded simply, "I trust you will be so good as to clean this up."
With that he had walked out, primly stepping over the splintered remains of the door, and leaving Passepartout looking as if he were about to break into tears.
It was all terribly strange.
Really, Jules reflected as he irritably swept up shards of broken glass, Passepartout’s idea hadn’t been such a far-fetched one. After all, his concoction probably would have done a fine job of dissolving the rust on the hinges—if not for that little unforeseen chemical reaction.
Still, he found himself wondering if Passepartout had done it on purpose, even unconsciously, in an effort to get some sort of rise out of his master.
Fogg was a walking shadow. The nervous fears only held sway over him at night now, but by daylight they had given way to a desolate sense of surrender and quiet sadness. The ever-shifting energies that once defined him were absent. He wasn’t in a good temper; he had no temper, as the mishap of the morning had proved. He was absolutely immovable from his strange quiescence.
Yet the anger was still in there somewhere. After hearing Fogg open his bedroom door to look in on him two nights before, Jules had crept downstairs and secretly observed the older man in the library. At times he paced, and at other times he sat perfectly motionless in one of the deep armchairs, with his gaze fixed on the fire that burned on the hearth. All of his unrelieved frustrations and doubts had been visible in his face, in that presumed scene of solitude.
His denial of them was surely killing him, and he knew it as well as anyone.
"Jules?"
The young Frenchman jumped, dropping the broom and almost tripping over it as he turned around. Rebecca was standing on the threshold of the workshop, smoothing down her cranberry-colored skirts to keep them from catching on splintered bits of the doorjamb. She smiled at him. "Sorry to have startled you. I was looking for Passepartout."
"Uh… he went to get some things. To fix the door." Jules fought the urge to smack himself on the forehead for sounding so provincial and unpolished around Rebecca. At least he had the comfort of knowing that his was not an isolated reaction to her. Glossing over his embarrassment, he bent down to pick up the broom.
"Ah, yes. You two did cause quite a stir this morning, didn’t you?" With delicate care Rebecca stepped into the room, loftily surveying the damage. "Wish I hadn’t missed all the fun. I understand Phileas was… very forgiving."
Something in her tone made Jules flinch inwardly. No one was more concerned than Rebecca about her cousin’s altered personality.
On that awful day at Balmoral Castle, certain facts of life had penetrated Jules’ thick skull, as he stood back and watched Rebecca drag Phileas’ soul from the depths. He had understood then, suddenly, and surprisingly without pain, what he would never be. What no man ever could be to Rebecca, except for Phileas—even if it was something Phileas never did become. There existed a passion next to which any physical manifestation of love meant precisely nothing.
There was no contending with the one soul which would ever be a part of hers.
Slowly Jules set aside the broom, looking into Rebecca’s eyes for the honest answer he knew she would give him. What she was to him was a friend, and that was still worth everything.
"Do you think Phileas is ever going to be his old self again?"
Rebecca lowered her gaze, and for a fleeting moment he saw the pain there—but she looked up again with that soft smile of comfort, and in her eyes there was a real glimmer of hope, or at least determination. "Of course he will, Jules. He only needs time."
Her word would settle anything. Jules smiled weakly, then sighed and started fussing with the broom again. "I have to get back to Paris…"
"That’s something I mean to talk to Phileas about. I expect Passepartout can take you on the Aurora as soon as the day after tomorrow. Would that do?"
"Oh, yes, of course. And I know I’ve imposed too long already, I just… hate leaving Phileas, while he’s still this way."
Stepping forward, Rebecca put a hand under his chin and tilted his face toward hers. "Jules, you are not imposing. You never could. Especially when you’re helping a friend in need." Almost impulsively, she leaned forward and planted a kiss on his cheek. "It means very much to me."
Feeling his face grow hot, Jules smiled dumbly. "Any time."
In his normal state, Phileas Fogg might be anywhere at any time, and to a degree this still held true for his nightly roamings. Now, however, there was only one place where he would be found in the morning. After her brief conversation with Jules, Rebecca went to the study.
Her cousin was standing at the window, his right hand resting on the sill and his left hand on his hip. It was the cocky, dashing stance of the old Phileas, precisely as erect and poised as before—yet somehow entirely lacking the arrogance, the sharpness and energetic tension. Even with his back to her, Rebecca could still read that painful incompleteness. She wondered that Jules, with his clever intuitive mind, hadn’t understood it just as well as she did.
Phileas was afraid of himself.
His was not a quiet soul. His fragile mask of cool, steady control was far from natural to him; it was an acquired skill, born of the hard-learned understanding that he was the master of his passions, and not they his. Nicol McLean had methodically stripped him of that understanding, corrupting those passions by the intricate manipulation of his memories and emotions. And once torn from the brink of that madness, Phileas shrank back from reclaiming his passions as his strength, as the vital part of his being that they were—for fear he might fail to master them again.
The true Phileas Fogg was dying after all. It was just happening more slowly and painfully than anyone had first anticipated.
"It’s a lovely day." He said it like a condemned man’s final statement. He did not turn to look at her, but something in his voice made her realize that he was entirely sober.
"And here you are, just looking at it." Rebecca leaned on the windowsill beside him, looking out on the simple sunlit purity of a blue sky and green grass. "Perhaps we ought to go out for a ride. Or have you had enough excitement for one day?"
It was a deliberate opening. Rebecca knew better than to think Phileas might go off about Passepartout being a clumsy imbecile, and Jules a reckless man-child who would probably help assemble the guillotine for his own execution—but she could hope for a look, a tone of voice, some trace of animation that might slip past his dull façade.
Instead, he saw right through her.
"At the present, I rather think I’ve caused enough excitement for several lifetimes." He turned to look at her with an earnest, almost apologetic expression. "Perhaps later…"
There were layers of meaning in the last two words which resounded in Rebecca’s heart. Perhaps later he would go riding with her. Perhaps later he would surface from his undeserved new depths of self-doubt. Perhaps later he would make that choice, and let himself be the man he was.
He stepped away from the window and went to sit down. Rebecca followed, automatically settling into an armchair opposite his own.
"I was talking to Jules," she began. "I think we should have Passepartout take him back to Paris the day after tomorrow. He needs to be back to his studies."
"Yes, I suppose so." Phileas looked momentarily rueful, then gave her one of his rare and heartbreaking melancholy smiles—the kind he usually reserved for short-circuiting her reproach when he was too drunk to pretend he wasn’t drunk. "The household will be a bit safer, at least."
It was a weak attempt, but a good one. Rebecca returned the smile, but it quickly faded.
"I’m afraid I have to leave shortly. I’ve a meeting… with Sir Jonathan."
Phileas sat up straighter, with an expression of disapproval that was refreshingly normal. "What the devil does he want you for now?"
Yes, that was a slightly demanding note in his voice. It was quite an improvement. She should have mentioned her superior’s name days ago.
"It’s nothing important, Phileas." Rebecca caught herself sounding defensive on reflex, and took a breath. It was strangely good to feel annoyed with him, but the subject of her errand was one she would just as rather not be required to spell out. "It’s just some details of… the investigation."
"Chatsworth…" Phileas’ expression had grown distant, and with barely the effort of a twitched muscle, he was suddenly on his feet. "I’m coming with you."
"Phileas…!"
Rebecca trailed off when she saw his eyes. No more the sad and passive doll’s eyes of the preceding days, they were dark and alive with intent. For this moment, Phileas had come back into his own—passions and all.
Yet Rebecca was suddenly unsure this was such a good thing.
"I’m coming with you," he repeated, and a chill passed through her—for his voice bore the taut, cryptic tone with which he had spoken at Balmoral Castle, when she had knelt on a tabletop and held him to life with nothing more than whispered memories.
© 2002 Jordanna Morgan
Chapters: 1 :: 2 :: 3 :: 4 :: 5 :: 6 :: 7 ::
Author:
jordannamorganPermission to Archive: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Characters: Ensemble.
Setting: Following the episode "The Victorian Candidate".
Summary: Self-doubts haunt Phileas in the wake of his ordeal in Scotland.
Disclaimer: Jules and company belong to Talisman Crest. I’m just having fun with them.
The Foggs’ return to Shillingworth Magna was greeted by the household staff with the usual concern, and the usual polite pretenses of ignorance. Some matters had called them to Scotland—or so it had been said—and Mister Fogg had for a time taken gravely ill—or so they were told. No one believed it, but no one cared whether anyone believed it. That was the way of things. Besides, there was enough to be concerned about with the good master’s temperament—and not in the usual manner.
In the days following his return home, Mister Fogg did not once berate Passepartout, nor snap at any of the other servants, nor argue with his cousin. For the most part he isolated himself in his study, a common signal that he was in his cups. His mood would brighten just a little when he took meals with Miss Rebecca and his young French friend Master Jules, but apart from their company, he was lethargic and dispirited. Even the newspapers he had once religiously perused went untouched, the daily copies of the Times stacking up on the desk unread. Nothing appeared to entertain his interest.
Only at night would he grow restless. He would get up and walk about the house alone, now and again silently looking into the room of Miss Rebecca or Master Jules. Eventually Passepartout would find him, and without a word exchanged would take him unprotesting back to his bed—yet in the morning he would be tired, and would drowse by himself in his study once again.
When approached about what was ailing him, Mister Fogg would simply give a weak smile and admit that he had not been feeling quite himself. Indeed, truer words were never spoken, for the volatile, capricious Phileas Fogg had become quiet, docile, and entirely non-confrontational—in short, a total stranger. And while this mild demeanor was novel at first, it was simply too unnatural to be comfortable.
Perhaps that had something to do with it when, early on the morning of the fifth day, Passepartout managed to blow off the door of his workshop.
It all happened quite "accidentably", according to the valet, and may or may not have involved the complicity of Master Jules; that part was never quite clear afterward. To be fair, the sound of the blast had brought Mister Fogg at a run from his study. Finding Passepartout and Master Jules in the clearing smoke, however, he had taken each man by the arm and looked him over, with all the symptoms of an unbearable sort of anxiousness.
"Are you alright?" he had asked, with a tension in his voice that was decidedly not anger.
"Fine," Master Jules had mumbled in reply, as Passepartout stared at the floor, nodded sheepishly, and shuffled his feet.
"I see." Mister Fogg’s tension faded to a peculiar resigned neutrality, and after casting a glance around the room, he concluded simply, "I trust you will be so good as to clean this up."
With that he had walked out, primly stepping over the splintered remains of the door, and leaving Passepartout looking as if he were about to break into tears.
It was all terribly strange.
Really, Jules reflected as he irritably swept up shards of broken glass, Passepartout’s idea hadn’t been such a far-fetched one. After all, his concoction probably would have done a fine job of dissolving the rust on the hinges—if not for that little unforeseen chemical reaction.
Still, he found himself wondering if Passepartout had done it on purpose, even unconsciously, in an effort to get some sort of rise out of his master.
Fogg was a walking shadow. The nervous fears only held sway over him at night now, but by daylight they had given way to a desolate sense of surrender and quiet sadness. The ever-shifting energies that once defined him were absent. He wasn’t in a good temper; he had no temper, as the mishap of the morning had proved. He was absolutely immovable from his strange quiescence.
Yet the anger was still in there somewhere. After hearing Fogg open his bedroom door to look in on him two nights before, Jules had crept downstairs and secretly observed the older man in the library. At times he paced, and at other times he sat perfectly motionless in one of the deep armchairs, with his gaze fixed on the fire that burned on the hearth. All of his unrelieved frustrations and doubts had been visible in his face, in that presumed scene of solitude.
His denial of them was surely killing him, and he knew it as well as anyone.
"Jules?"
The young Frenchman jumped, dropping the broom and almost tripping over it as he turned around. Rebecca was standing on the threshold of the workshop, smoothing down her cranberry-colored skirts to keep them from catching on splintered bits of the doorjamb. She smiled at him. "Sorry to have startled you. I was looking for Passepartout."
"Uh… he went to get some things. To fix the door." Jules fought the urge to smack himself on the forehead for sounding so provincial and unpolished around Rebecca. At least he had the comfort of knowing that his was not an isolated reaction to her. Glossing over his embarrassment, he bent down to pick up the broom.
"Ah, yes. You two did cause quite a stir this morning, didn’t you?" With delicate care Rebecca stepped into the room, loftily surveying the damage. "Wish I hadn’t missed all the fun. I understand Phileas was… very forgiving."
Something in her tone made Jules flinch inwardly. No one was more concerned than Rebecca about her cousin’s altered personality.
On that awful day at Balmoral Castle, certain facts of life had penetrated Jules’ thick skull, as he stood back and watched Rebecca drag Phileas’ soul from the depths. He had understood then, suddenly, and surprisingly without pain, what he would never be. What no man ever could be to Rebecca, except for Phileas—even if it was something Phileas never did become. There existed a passion next to which any physical manifestation of love meant precisely nothing.
There was no contending with the one soul which would ever be a part of hers.
Slowly Jules set aside the broom, looking into Rebecca’s eyes for the honest answer he knew she would give him. What she was to him was a friend, and that was still worth everything.
"Do you think Phileas is ever going to be his old self again?"
Rebecca lowered her gaze, and for a fleeting moment he saw the pain there—but she looked up again with that soft smile of comfort, and in her eyes there was a real glimmer of hope, or at least determination. "Of course he will, Jules. He only needs time."
Her word would settle anything. Jules smiled weakly, then sighed and started fussing with the broom again. "I have to get back to Paris…"
"That’s something I mean to talk to Phileas about. I expect Passepartout can take you on the Aurora as soon as the day after tomorrow. Would that do?"
"Oh, yes, of course. And I know I’ve imposed too long already, I just… hate leaving Phileas, while he’s still this way."
Stepping forward, Rebecca put a hand under his chin and tilted his face toward hers. "Jules, you are not imposing. You never could. Especially when you’re helping a friend in need." Almost impulsively, she leaned forward and planted a kiss on his cheek. "It means very much to me."
Feeling his face grow hot, Jules smiled dumbly. "Any time."
In his normal state, Phileas Fogg might be anywhere at any time, and to a degree this still held true for his nightly roamings. Now, however, there was only one place where he would be found in the morning. After her brief conversation with Jules, Rebecca went to the study.
Her cousin was standing at the window, his right hand resting on the sill and his left hand on his hip. It was the cocky, dashing stance of the old Phileas, precisely as erect and poised as before—yet somehow entirely lacking the arrogance, the sharpness and energetic tension. Even with his back to her, Rebecca could still read that painful incompleteness. She wondered that Jules, with his clever intuitive mind, hadn’t understood it just as well as she did.
Phileas was afraid of himself.
His was not a quiet soul. His fragile mask of cool, steady control was far from natural to him; it was an acquired skill, born of the hard-learned understanding that he was the master of his passions, and not they his. Nicol McLean had methodically stripped him of that understanding, corrupting those passions by the intricate manipulation of his memories and emotions. And once torn from the brink of that madness, Phileas shrank back from reclaiming his passions as his strength, as the vital part of his being that they were—for fear he might fail to master them again.
The true Phileas Fogg was dying after all. It was just happening more slowly and painfully than anyone had first anticipated.
"It’s a lovely day." He said it like a condemned man’s final statement. He did not turn to look at her, but something in his voice made her realize that he was entirely sober.
"And here you are, just looking at it." Rebecca leaned on the windowsill beside him, looking out on the simple sunlit purity of a blue sky and green grass. "Perhaps we ought to go out for a ride. Or have you had enough excitement for one day?"
It was a deliberate opening. Rebecca knew better than to think Phileas might go off about Passepartout being a clumsy imbecile, and Jules a reckless man-child who would probably help assemble the guillotine for his own execution—but she could hope for a look, a tone of voice, some trace of animation that might slip past his dull façade.
Instead, he saw right through her.
"At the present, I rather think I’ve caused enough excitement for several lifetimes." He turned to look at her with an earnest, almost apologetic expression. "Perhaps later…"
There were layers of meaning in the last two words which resounded in Rebecca’s heart. Perhaps later he would go riding with her. Perhaps later he would surface from his undeserved new depths of self-doubt. Perhaps later he would make that choice, and let himself be the man he was.
He stepped away from the window and went to sit down. Rebecca followed, automatically settling into an armchair opposite his own.
"I was talking to Jules," she began. "I think we should have Passepartout take him back to Paris the day after tomorrow. He needs to be back to his studies."
"Yes, I suppose so." Phileas looked momentarily rueful, then gave her one of his rare and heartbreaking melancholy smiles—the kind he usually reserved for short-circuiting her reproach when he was too drunk to pretend he wasn’t drunk. "The household will be a bit safer, at least."
It was a weak attempt, but a good one. Rebecca returned the smile, but it quickly faded.
"I’m afraid I have to leave shortly. I’ve a meeting… with Sir Jonathan."
Phileas sat up straighter, with an expression of disapproval that was refreshingly normal. "What the devil does he want you for now?"
Yes, that was a slightly demanding note in his voice. It was quite an improvement. She should have mentioned her superior’s name days ago.
"It’s nothing important, Phileas." Rebecca caught herself sounding defensive on reflex, and took a breath. It was strangely good to feel annoyed with him, but the subject of her errand was one she would just as rather not be required to spell out. "It’s just some details of… the investigation."
"Chatsworth…" Phileas’ expression had grown distant, and with barely the effort of a twitched muscle, he was suddenly on his feet. "I’m coming with you."
"Phileas…!"
Rebecca trailed off when she saw his eyes. No more the sad and passive doll’s eyes of the preceding days, they were dark and alive with intent. For this moment, Phileas had come back into his own—passions and all.
Yet Rebecca was suddenly unsure this was such a good thing.
"I’m coming with you," he repeated, and a chill passed through her—for his voice bore the taut, cryptic tone with which he had spoken at Balmoral Castle, when she had knelt on a tabletop and held him to life with nothing more than whispered memories.
© 2002 Jordanna Morgan
Chapters: 1 :: 2 :: 3 :: 4 :: 5 :: 6 :: 7 ::