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"And for this you left the struggle? For this, is why you left France?"
The voice is his brother's, and so is the sentiment, Jean Passepartout knows this. But the body and face are in shadow, the way they were the last time he saw Gerard -- as the traitorous officers of the reign of Thiers filled him with bullets.
"Comfortable, eh?" Gerard asks, and he was until a second ago, warm in a bed, safe from harm, well fed and with a nice glass of brandy in him. Now all he sees is his brother's corpse.
"I gave the struggle my brother and my father," he manages. "What more did it want?"
His brother's face splits open then, not with a bullet but like a terrible flower; it splits into a tooth-riddled maw, prepared to swallow him whole, and it screams, everything.
***
Phileas woke to soft noises in his room.
He'd never slept soundly as a child, but one got used to the farts and snores of other boys in the dormitories, and later the whispered conversations, be they confessions or bullyings (or even the odd tryst). It took a lot to rouse him, or at least it had a year ago. Sometime during the journey, and certainly by journey's end, he had learned to come awake at any sound that indicated another person was near.
He opened his eyes in the darkness, not moving or varying his breath, though he'd twisted himself into a ball in his sleep and his lash-wound ached. It had been dressed by a good surgeon a'shipboard and the dressings changed and stitches removed on the passage from New York, but their breakneck pace did not account for the frailty of the body, and it hadn't yet fully healed.
Passepartout was in his rooms, moving almost silently, apparently looking for something. Was he...rifling his clothing?
"If you're looking for the money you're well aware I keep it in the safe," he said in a murmur, and Passepartout stiffened. Phileas sat up, yawning.
"If you think I would steal from you now -- " Passepartout began in a threatening voice, but Phileas waved it off.
"I'm sorry, that wasn't a very funny joke," he said. "I've no idea what you're doing, but I know you wouldn't steal. You'd hardly need to rob my room in any case. There's silver enough in the kitchen, but you know I'd give it to you freely if you needed cash so badly."
Passepartout held up Phileas's shirt, discarded on the floor. There were little spots of blood on the back where his wound had split -- the exertion of their mad dash to the club the previous day.
"You must exercise more caution," he said. "And you've left your rooms in a state."
"Are you...are you tidying up?" Phileas asked. "You've no need. You're my guest here and long ago stopped being my valet."
"What a pleasure to see you carry your own carpetbag," Passepartout agreed.
"So why would you come tidy my rooms at..." he squinted at the clock. "Half four in the morning?"
Passepartout crumpled the shirt around his hands, sitting down on the edge of the bed. Phileas rested his arms on his knees, head on his arms, waiting.
"I have never heard a house so still," he said finally. "I woke and it seemed nobody in the world was alive. That big echoing room you gave me, it felt like a crypt."
Phileas considered this. "Well, I'm sorry -- we can find you a smaller, noisier room if that's what you're after."
"No, it was..." he looked up at the ceiling. "I just needed to see another living person. It wasn't about tidying. Certainly not tidying for you," he added, with a hint of humor. Phileas tilted his head, acknowledging this was fair. "But you seemed the better option than Miss Fix."
"Mm. It's not my place to say, of course, but I'm not entirely sure she'd mind," Phileas pointed out. Passepartout didn't blush, but then, he was French.
"Perhaps. Unimportant. I've woken you, I should go -- "
"No, stay," Phileas commanded, and then, remembering himself, "I mean, please. I'd like it if you did."
"Why?" Passepartout asked, seemingly genuine in his perplexity. It took Phileas a moment of reflection to determine an answer.
"You seem troubled. I'd like to help. Been very bad at that in the past, no time like the present to mend my ways," he said. Passepartout, half-risen from the bed, settled back down.
"There was so much," he said.
"So much what?" Phileas asked.
"So much of everything. I've never had something so fixed as this, so familiar..." Passepartout gestured around him at the house. "Not since I was young. The travel was nothing new. Hard berths, cold sleeps. Sneaking comfort where I could, joy when I could manage or buy it. But now..."
"Now you are anchored," Phileas guessed. "Something in you knows that room, that crypt -- "
"I'm sorry, that wasn't fair -- "
"No, it's fine, I never even chose this house," Phileas said. "It was my father's. You know that room, should you want it, is yours forever."
"You said nothing so."
"Did I need to?" Phileas asked. Passepartout exhaled. "Some part of you knew."
"Maybe." Passepartout turned to him. "Maybe all my ghosts know I can't run from them anymore. They're all catching up with me now."
Phileas wrapped his arms around his knees. "That must be very frightening," he said quietly.
"I dreamed of my brother. That he wanted to devour me for what I did to him."
"Oh, Jean -- "
"Nothing I could have done would have changed what happened, but that's still what I feel, here," Jean told him, tapping his own heart. "I will always feel as though I had a hand in his murder."
"No more so than I did," Phileas said. "Arguably less than I did. But I take your point."
"I think I will have to bury them again. My father, my brother. Make amends for this, too," Jean added, indicating the blood on the shirt.
"Forgiven. You know that. Always forgiven," Phileas said instantly. "Or else why did we have to go through all of that? The island, your illness. Nonsense, Jean. Forgiven as if it hadn't happened."
"But it did."
"A great many things did, that I hope we never discuss again," Phileas said. His mortifying treatment of Jean at the start of their journey, to say the least, and his arrogance in the desert, and...
He pulled his mind back from it, because the enormity of the last three months could not be encompassed in a single moment. The whole world could not be compressed into the palm of one's hand.
"Well, we are alive," he added. "No crypts for us. Bury what you must. But for now, if life's what you need, come here. Come," he repeated, when Jean looked mistrustfully at him. He gestured with one hand, flipping up the bedclothes on the enormous bed he'd slept alone in for twenty years. "More than enough room. Not like we haven't shared worse."
"This at least is true," Jean agreed with a smile, and crawled across the counterpane to the sheets. He curled up on his side and Phileas rolled to face him, fighting the boarding-school instinct to lie back-to-back, to deny the most basic of intimacies. Instead they faced each other, although Jean had already closed his eyes. Phileas watched him for a while but it was still early, and they'd all been up late talking after the return from the club. His eyes closed not long after Jean's did.
***
Abigail was not as alone in the world as Phileas and Passepartout were when it came to family; she had a father who had worried about her. And she'd seen the naked terror in her father's eyes when they returned. She knew him well enough to understand he was afraid both that she would denounce him to his club and that she might hate him forever. She'd settled that, at least, but they hadn't spoken much before she'd fled the club with the boys and disappeared into the Christmas snow.
She'd need to reconcile with him today, but she had at least stopped, letting them go ahead, to scribble a note to him saying where she was and that they'd speak later. Filial duty done, she'd slept in one of Fogg's guest rooms that night with a light heart.
Now, however, she was awake and hungry, and the boys were nowhere in evidence. In the kitchen she found tea and toast being made by Grayson with aching slowness, and resolved that they would need to hire a cook and likely a handful of servants to get the place ship-shape.
It did not occur to her not to take occupancy of the house and immediately become its mistress. She had no desire to be a wife, or at least she had no desire for a domestic role, but she had run her father's house for years with one hand while learning his trade with the other, and could easily do the same here.
"Grayson, would you mind terribly if I took that?" she asked, when the assembly of the breakfast tray was nearly complete. "I need an excuse to pester Mr. Fogg, and those stairs must be terrible on your knees."
"Well...they aren't what they once were, miss, but I should never complain," Grayson replied, a trifle querulous.
"Our secret," she said. "I'll tell Mr. Fogg I insisted."
"That's very kind of you, Miss Fix," he said, and seated himself as she lifted the tray.
Upstairs, she rapped briefly on Fogg's bedroom door and then, when there was no response, elbowed her way inside. She set the breakfast tray on the stand clearly meant for it, deciding she'd wake him by opening the curtains.
Halfway across the room she stopped, almost unconsciously registering that there were two people in the bed, two soft inhale-exhales, and not one.
Fogg was on his side, tilted forward a little, a pillow clutched to his chest. Passepartout lay on his back next to him, one arm outflung awkwardly over Fogg's side, hand dangling out over nothing, the other resting behind his own head.
Her heart ached. They looked like boys. They always had. Passepartout wasn't much older than her. Fogg, who was her father's age, had never looked it, even as tired and weathered as he'd been at some points on the journey.
They all thought of it that way, talked of it that way, she thought. Before it was an undertaking or a goal or, with great disdain, a bet. Now, here, afterwards, it was The Journey.
Even after they were long out of it, even when they were in tropical climes, the cold of the Empty Quarter at night sometimes seeped into her bones. Usually as she tried to sleep, but sometimes too when she was awake. She had come out of the desert different than she went in, and the cold was a cruel reminder of the innocence she'd lost. Of what Passepartout had lost too, on her behalf.
Well. She might be cold, but they were warm, and when she crawled between them, heedless of any impropriety, they made space. Jean unconsciously leaned towards her, and Fogg went easily when she pushed him gently to make room, rolling back against her, nose pressed to the nape of her neck, when she was still. Jean's forehead came to rest against hers and she wasn't entirely surprised his eyes were open.
"Might have known I'd find you here," she whispered.
"Might say the same," he said tartly, but his eyebrows raised in the way that said he was making a joke.
"There's tea and toast if you're hungry," Abigail told him.
"Let it get cold," Jean replied.
"Probably already has," she said. "It's a bloody trek getting here from the kitchen."
There was a grumbling noise from behind her. "First Jean says it's a crypt and now you say it's the Himalayas," Phileas said, easy outrage in his voice, the kind she recognized as put on for her benefit rather than genuine.
"I've been over the Himalayas, this was worse," she said.
"Oh, we've all been over the Himalayas," he replied dismissively.
"That is true," Jean said. "We both know you are exaggerating."
"Writer's prerogative," she sniffed. "Anyway. Phileas, there's tea if you want some."
In reply he curled an arm around her waist, which was fine, since it meant some of the blankets were also draped over her. The cold in her bones settled and then dissipated, leaving only satisfied warmth.
"What shall we three do?" she asked softly, not especially worried, just curious.
"Sleep," Jean suggested. "For a week. Three weeks at the outside."
"Obviously, but what then?"
Both men were quiet, considering.
Finally, Phileas drew in a breath. "I'm a wealthy man," he said. "Even after the twenty thousand pounds that no doubt has already been drawn by Bellamy. After your success with the column, you could write your own ticket. Turn the journey into a book, or sell whatever you like to your father's paper or any other. Passepartout is famous now; there are roads open to him, too. World's our mollusc, really. What would you like best to do?"
"Write for the paper, still, obviously," she said. "Jean?"
"Can I answer after the three weeks of sleep?" Jean pleaded. "And M'seur still hasn't fully healed."
"But we've been plenty of places," Phileas continued. "If you could go anywhere, either one of you, where would you go? Do you want adventure? I don't even know if I do, but it's very difficult to stop once one gets the habit of it."
"We never did see Japan," Jean pointed out.
"And we did miss all of South America," Abigail added.
Phileas made a thoughtful noise. "A passage west, perhaps. Oh! Miss Fix, what about your taking a speaking tour? Those are very popular now, especially in America. Start in London, then to New York, south along the American coast..."
"Not...too far south," Jean said carefully.
"Blast. No, of course not. Straight back on the boat from New York, or perhaps Philadelphia. We'll have to skirt Cuba -- very bad business there right now -- but we could try for an overland passage through Panama."
"Or Argentina!" Abigail said. "Around the coast of Brazil, through Argentina to the Pacific -- or a stop in Argentina and then around the Horn..."
"Isn't that quite perilous?" Phileas asked.
"If a gold miner on his way to California twenty-five years ago can manage it, I expect we can," she replied boldly. His fingers tapped against the blanket, and under that, her stomach. Thoughtful, absent, as if if were the most natural thing in the world. Jean was watching her, eyes alight.
"We could really see San Francisco this time," Phileas said.
"And then on to Japan," Jean agreed. "But from there, where?"
"Anywhere we like," Abigail said. "Back to London. Onward back through Asia. Or perhaps the North Pole."
She felt, more than heard, the soft laugh from Phileas. "Well?" she prompted.
"I was only thinking," he said. "I like London, and your father's here of course, but there's not a thing preventing us from simply...stopping in Japan if we fancied. There's nothing preventing us from stopping anywhere. Like Jane Digby. Expatriates in a foreign homeland." There was a pause in his voice that spoke of something he wasn't sure he wanted to share, but she and Jean both knew his ways, and they waited.
"There are places where no-one would comment on a woman like yourself and a man like Jean," he said slowly. "Or if they did, they wouldn't have the law at the back of them. We could go somewhere it would be...easier for the two of you. Easier than London, certainly."
"And what about you?" Jean asked.
"Oh, wherever we go I shall make the tea and be useful about the place, I imagine. Keep strange hours and wear one of those long robe getups, or whatever is in particular fashion. Eccentric Englishmen have been doing that sort of thing for ages."
Abigail found his hand and squeezed her own around it.
"I don't think that's what Jean was asking, Phileas," she said softly.
"It was not, no," Jean agreed.
Silence was like a blanket, muting everything, until Phileas inhaled again.
"Ah. Oh. Well. I suppose...that's a sticky wicket," he said slowly.
Jean blew air through his lips. "Cricket!"
"I just mean to say I'm a complication," Phileas said. "You two are sort of...sorted, eh?"
"Are we, Jean?" she asked.
"I couldn't say, Abigail," Jean replied.
Phileas let her go, rolling out of bed entirely, and she wondered if she'd pushed things too far -- she knew she was good at that -- but he only went to the breakfast tray to pour a cup of tea. He returned with the tea and a slice of toast, but he sat at the foot of the bed instead of rejoining them. She sat up, and Jean leaned over her, chin on her shoulder. Phileas passed her the toast, which she split with Jean, and then regarded them with those dark eyes of his. They were less nervous than they had been eighty-one days ago, but no less bottomless.
"I suppose," he said, "that we might sort all of that out as we go. If that's all right with you. London, New York, Philadelphia -- "
"Boston?" she suggested.
"Right you are. Buenos Aires and around the horn. San Francisco."
"And then the passage to Tokyo," Jean finished.
"Might take us more than eighty days, but you're the one who laid out our last map," Phileas said to Abigail. "So I suppose....you plot the course, and Jean and I will steer by it. Come what may."
She reached out and took the hand not holding the teacup, her other one finding Jean's.
"Very well, then," she said. "But first Jean will sleep, and you will heal, and I will ask my editor to promote my speaking tour."
When she tugged, Phileas came to her easily, setting the half-drunk tea on his bedside table. Jean lay back and Phileas burrowed the blankets open and there they were, all three again.
"Sleep, darling," she said to Jean.
"Time enough to mourn your brother," Phileas added, clearly something they'd discussed before she arrived.
"Time enough for the lash to become just a scar," Jean replied. "What will you do with the time, Abigail?"
"I will find wherever is warm," she said, "and stay there."
There was a pause, comfortable, and then she added, "And also practice my marksmanship for next time."
"Lord," Phileas said loudly, and Jean said "Of course," in the way that announced he was leaving the you madwoman unsaid, and Abigail laughed and let them berate her about the very idea of a 'next time' until they'd worn themselves out.