Chapter Text
She was surrounded by darkness .
It was the inkiest, darkest dark she’d ever experienced. An involuntary shutter raked through her body, head to toe, as she struggled to sit upright.
“H-Hello?” The tremor in her whispered voice would have betrayed her if anyone was listening, making it obvious that the Honorable Miss Phryne Fisher was , in fact, susceptible to fear.
Silence answered, causing her heart to pound faster. The chill of her surroundings seeped into her body, filling her with a sense of dread.
“Jack?” Her throat was painfully dry. A flood of overwhelming emotions threatened to seize control of her logic, prompting her to speak louder. “Are you here, Jack…? ” She wasn’t certain why she woke up compelled to call for him, but something inside told her that he was the last person she’d seen…
The Lady Detective couldn’t see her hand in front of her face. The space around her was so thick with an abyss of blackness that she momentarily questioned her state of consciousness, quickly dispelling the notion that she was trapped in a nightmare. She sensed, however, that she wasn’t alone and forced herself to swallow a new rush of panic at the unknown. Stretching her arms out, her hands dragged along the dirt floor upon which she had been laying, she couldn’t feel anything in any direction. No walls, no furniture, nothing but dirt and pebbles as her fingers swept to and fro.
Her body was stiff; most likely she’d been lying in one position for too long after being left there… wherever there was. Her thoughts were foggy, disconnected, and she struggled to recall what she’d been doing just prior to her only other memory of waking up moments ago. The only thing she thought she was certain of was that she’d been with Senior Detective Jack Robinson.
Closing her eyes to stave off a sudden onset of nausea, she braced herself upright by locking her elbows and leaning back, focusing on her breathing.
Breathe....
In , two-three-four…
Out , two-three-four….
In , two-three-four…
Out , two-three-four…
Repeat ...
When the threat of regurgitation finally subsided, she opened her eyes again. It was still dark, disorienting, and frankly, terrifying. She never did like dark spaces, not since she was a child and her father had taken a fancy to locking her in a cupboard during his drunken stupors in failed attempts to break her spirit. As Phryne had matured, she learned to hide her insecurities from most of the world, preferring, instead, to give off an air of carefree and blissful confidence. The young-girl inside, however, made the occasional appearance when adult-Phryne faced horrors such as abusive men, confined spaces or unnavigable labyrinths… and spiders…
The mere thought of spiders triggered an intense reaction, and she instantly withdrew her hands from the floor, tucking them tight against her body as she tried to control her breathing again, squeezing her eyes closed.
Breathe....
In , two-three-four…
Out , two-three-four….
In , two-three-four…
Out , two-three-four…
Repeat ...
Regaining control, she dared to look around, but was, again, met with darkness. Feeling more grounded, her thoughts instantly returned to Jack. Few and far between were the individuals in whom Phryne had enough trust to let her true self peek through. Most recently, and perhaps most importantly , she’d been allowing herself to open up to her unconventional partner. She was convinced that he was the best man she'd ever known.
Over the past several months, they’d been growing closer, often taking dinner together or sharing a nightcap over a draughts board and easy conversation, even in the absence of shared cases or investigations. His quiet countenance, sometimes misinterpreted by people who didn’t know him as shyness or insecurity, had steadily pulled her into his steadfast orbit, as he demonstrated his loyalty to her, even in times when she knew herself to be a nuisance. The mere fact that, time and again, he allowed her to bulldoze her way onto his crime scenes spoke volumes. Granted, his acquiescence was often accompanied by the obligatory grumbling and snarkiness due his station, ( after all he did have a certain appearance to uphold ), but that only proved to her that she had gained his trust. Perhaps not only his trust in her sleuthing abilities and intuitive deductions, but in her as a person, as an equal .
Well , she thought, the one and only Jack Robinson might have trust in me, but a fat lot of good that’ll do for me in this particular conundrum .
Feeling uncharacteristic, and unwelcome , tears slip free from her lower lids, she brushed them away angrily. As her normally-quick mind struggled to remember anything that would shed light, metaphorical or otherwise, on her current predicament, she sobbed a single, sorrowful syllable into the silent void.
“ Jack… ”