Chapter Text
She tells herself that she knocked this time.
She’s been getting better at it, remembering to respect his boundaries and to honor what he’s asked of her. If she’s honest, he doesn’t ask for much, and it is all well within what she is willing to compromise on.
Please knock before entering. Please inform me before pursuing a violent criminal into a dangerous part of London. Please keep me abreast of your investigations with weekly reports, on my desk by Monday morning as I expect from all my detectives.
He doesn’t command her not to conduct investigations. He doesn’t command her to stay at home. He doesn’t command her to remember her place. He doesn’t command her not pursue her heart’s calling.
Always please.
She’s pleasantly surprised by her own acquiescence of his requests and her willingness to respect his boundaries. But lately the lines he draws and those she does too have become blurred. Unclear. Fading.
She can’t remember the last time he had to remind her to knock.
“I know I’m a tad late this morning, but I have my report right here…”
She trails off when she hears a throaty chuckle, a sound that is at once as familiar as it is foreign, as time is known to do to all things.
“Still haven’t learned to knock, I see.”
Her fists clench around the parchment in her hand, causing it to wrinkle and crease. Her shoulders stiffen, and for a moment she is not sure whether she’ll look up from her report or simply spin on the ball of her foot and leave post-haste.
Because she knows that voice. She has known it her whole life. And even though she had hoped she had forgotten it, her heart doesn’t have such a fickle memory as her mind. It had been carved there over the years, inked into her skin in blood, and now she feels that blood run cold.
In spite of her better judgement, she looks up and his eyes meet hers. He smiles.
“Hello, Eliza.”
Her mouth opens and her lips move, but for a moment, no sounds come out. He just stands there, that infuriating smirk on his face and watches her with warm ebony eyes.
Distantly, she hears footsteps echoing down the hall, approaching. She’s still wrestling with the conundrum of forming words when the comforting scent of parchment, ink, and sandalwood wafts into the room.
“Ah, Miss Scarlet,” he intones in that precise way of his. “I’m glad you could join us.”
She almost laughs. She barely restrains herself from emitting a high-pitched peal of maniacal laughter when she glances over at Inspector Blake rounding his sturdy oak desk to set another sheet of parchment onto the meticulously organized stacks on his desk. She stays quiet because hysterical laughter would make her look understandably insane, and it would make him worried.
Her eyes flicker to other man in the room who has yet to direct his amused gaze away from her, before she faces Inspector Blake again. If only he knew, she thinks darkly.
Without looking up from his desk, Inspector Blake says, “Detective Inspector Wellington, this is Miss Scarlet, the private detective that I informed you would be working the case alongside us.”
He doesn’t quite interrupt him, but it’s a near miss. “We’re already well acquainted.”
Maybe it’s the blatant warmth in his voice or the grating authority, but Inspector Blake looks up for the first time, his eyes flickering between Eliza and William. She can feel the questions in his gaze, but her tongue refuses to cooperate.
“Right,” he says carefully, “Of course. I suppose you might have crossed paths during your tenure at Scotland Yard.”
It’s bordering on a question, but William takes it as an open invitation to elaborate.
“Aye, you could say that,” he laughs, and the sound she once craved almost as much as the high of puzzling out the villain in a new case now makes her stomach turn. She must look a little green because Inspector Blake’s gaze sharpens as he looks at her. “Eliza and I butted heads well enough when I was in your shoes. She certainly never made my job easy, as I’m sure you’ve learned by now.”
She’s going to vomit on the office floor. Inspector Blake’s eyes flash at the casual use of her given name, and his gaze narrows, now fixed on William.
“I have found that when given the proper resources and support, Miss Scarlet has been quite an asset to the department.” Inspector Blake’s tone is blunt and firm. It’s the one he uses when he’s corned a suspect in the interrogation room, whose only option now is a confession. It brokers no room for argument.
William has the audacity to chuckle again. “Aye, that too. She truly is remarkable.” She doesn’t want to feel it, but warmth floods her chest on the heels of his praise. She has waited so long to hear him say it and now… “Remarkably stubborn and meddlesome, but brilliant in her own way.”
Her gut twists, and she wants to snap at him. But that would just feed his narrative of her wayward behavior, so she settles for shooting daggers at his head.
“Necessity certainly is the mother of invention.” Inspector Blake tucks his hands into his pockets in a stance that on the surface looks relaxed, but Eliza is surprised to realize she can see through the facade. The set of his shoulders, the stiffness in his lower back, the shortness of his sentences: all of it screams suspicion and discomfort.
William beams at her and some small shameful part of her wants to bask in it. But her mind has become as blank as parchment and across its tumultuous surface spills the back ink of his last letter, the waves of his words battering the last remnants of their relationship into sand.
Finally, she finds her voice. “Inspector Blake, I…” She doesn’t know what she was going to say, and she doesn’t get the chance to find out, because she’s interrupted again.
“Glad to see she’s learned to call someone by their title.” His voice is teasing, and it could be interpreted as playful banter. She thinks it must be, but she’s too shrouded in thunder clouds to see it. “Where was all this formality when I repeatedly instructed you to not call me ‘William’ in front of the men, hmm?”
Inspector Blake must look shocked enough that even William feels the need to explain further. “We were childhood friends. Well, friendly at least when we were instructed to be so,” his voice drips with nostalgia. “Her father was my superior on the force, but he practically raised me too. I suppose it was inevitable that Eliza and I would gravitate to the same interests. They could never keep us separated for long, even when they tried.”
She can’t answer him. Her cheeks are burning, and Inspector Blake’s eyes are flaring, and she can only imagine how this must look. Oh God! What respect Inspector Blake held for her must be evaporating by the minute. The silence in the room is deafening, and Eliza can’t bear to meet either of their gazes. She’s half a second from fleeing from the room entirely, when Inspector Blake finally steps around the boundary of his desk.
“Chief Garland wanted to speak with you about coordinating our investigations with the New York Police Force. I believe you are due to meet with him as we speak.”
William glances at his pocket watch. “Of course! It must have slipped my mind. Will you be attending the meeting as well?”
“No, I spoke with the Chief earlier.” Eliza glances up, curiosity suddenly getting the better of her. She had yet to meet the new Chief of Police since the previous one had abided by the suggested “early retirement” plan. She is shocked to find that while he is ostensibly speaking to William, Inspector Blake’s gaze is fixed on her. “There is greater need for me here, at the present.”
William nods, as though satisfied by this explanation. “I appreciate your assistance, Inspector Blake.” They do not shake hands, though Eliza is not sure why she thought they would. Instead, Inspector Blake raises his chin in a gesture that could almost be interpreted as a respectful acknowledgment if it weren’t for the steel in his cerulean eyes. William turns to her, and her stomach plummets. His smile is kind. “Good to see you, Eliza. It warms me to see that you are well.”
He leans in, and for a moment her heart stops. She has to resist the urge to slam her fist into his face, but then her blood freezes. He touches his lips gently to her cheek, a gesture that William would never have permitted himself when they used to work together. It’s quick — just the brush of warm soft skin and the wiry hair of his well-trimmed beard. It’s a ghost, a reminder of a different kiss and a different goodbye.
Maybe it’s her detective instincts to notice every detail, but she sees Inspector Blake’s shoulders stiffen out of the corner of her eye. Then William is gone, striding out the door that she swears she knocked on before entering, but she must’ve forgotten.
Because when was the last time that Inspector Blake reminded her to knock?
The tension in the silence could have been cut with a knife. Neither of them say anything, and in that moment, her memory chooses to remind her of Inspector Blake’s words, that silence was one of his best strategies to get suspects to talk. Unfortunately for him, Eliza wouldn’t be admitting her guilt quite so easily.
“Are you alright?” His voice was gentle but steady, and it startled her out of her catatonic trance.
Her eyes flash to his, and she blinks away mist from her eyes. She expects to see a reprimand in his gaze, stern disapproval for such impropriety. But whatever measly defense she had mustered dies on her tongue when she sees not a revoke, but rather concern in the stormy blue of his eyes. “You’ve been worryingly quiet,” Blake says, his voice not quite a whisper, but it’s edging toward one.
“I…” Eliza trails off. Clears her throat. “My apologies.”
“Don’t apologize.” The words are quick, sharp, with just a hint of a bite behind them. She’s shocked to find the ever-cool-headed Inspector Blake openly glaring at the door that William neglected to shut behind him. He strides towards it suddenly, closing it with a soft click. He returns to his desk and leans his hip against it, his gaze fixating on her again. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
She’s not sure what to do or what to say, her hands hanging limply against her sides. She wipes the sweat off her palms onto her skirts, and instead directs her gaze out his window, to the streets below, just beginning to wake in the crisp winter sunrise.
She can feel his gaze on her, and it might damn her to cowardice, but she refuses to meet his eyes. She hears the pop of a cork parting with the mouth of a bottle, and the trickle of liquid into a glass. A crystal goblet filled with a finger of amber whiskey appears in front of her, grasped in Blake’s large hand.
Eliza chuckles and this time she does meet his gaze. “It’s not yet ten in the morning.”
He gives her a half smile that crinkles the corners of his eyes and transforms his normally serious face into something warm. “I know. I also happen to know that you’ve been up all day and all night yesterday working, so it’s practically late evening for you now.”
She blinks at him in surprise. She hadn’t told him or anyone really, save perchance Clarence, that she’d been awake since yesterday morning, working diligently on wrapping up and cataloging the final details of their latest case. Blake is a brilliant inspector, so she really shouldn’t be surprised that he had deduced her exhaustion from the dark circles under her eyes.
She numbly accepts the drink from him, his fingers dragging softly against hers as he hands it to her.
She has to suppress a shiver as sparks of awareness shoot up her arm and dance down her spine. Something unreadable flashes across Blake’s face, before he settles against his desk once more, his clever eyes still laying her bare. She all but slumps into her chair in front of his desk.
She knows what he wants to know, but she just sips the whiskey instead of answering him, the bracing burn of the alcohol a comforting fortitude against the icy frustration in her chest.
She feels something tug on the parchment that is clasped, forgotten, in her hand, and she releases after a moment’s hesitation. Blake doesn’t say a word; he just calmly stacks it neatly with the other papers on his desk, even when its crinkled surface will no longer allow it to lay flat. It’s a small blip of chaos on an otherwise perfectly ordered desk.
Her other hand is now free to wrap around the goblet of whisky she’s nursing. She should tell him. He wants to know, she knows he does. She should explain everything — her father dying, salvaging his private detective firm, forging her own reputation, working and fighting and falling in love with William, her childhood crush…
She clears her throat. “So… the case.”
Eliza can almost feel his disappointment. A man like Inspector Blake — skilled detective that he is — is rooted in a innate sense of curiosity, the same burning desire that drives both of them to puzzle out the human psyche, to understand the why. They’re birds of feather in that aspect, but today she cannot share, and unfortunately, she’ll have to leave him wondering — for now.
But Inspector Blake is nothing if not a patient man. When she meets his eyes she sees understanding there, but also determination. He’s letting her hide today, but this conversation isn’t over, not by a long shot.
He nods and stands, walking back to his chair on the other side of the desk. He opens the case file, and thumbs over a page, before saying words that make her stomach twist again. “I’m inviting you to work on a new case with me — the brass want us to partner with the New York Police Department to catch an international serial killer who we believe has just moved their hunting ground from America to London.”
Her fingers clench around the goblet hard enough that she feels the prick of sharp crystal against her skin.
Blake hesitates for a moment, no doubt gaging her reaction. “We’ll be working with Inspector Wellington for the foreseeable future.” Something about the way he says William’s name is off, almost bitter in its countenance.
Her instincts are screaming at her to run, far and fast away from this case. Eliza Scarlet is many things, but she is not a coward. So, she lifts the goblet and downs the contents in a single swallow. When she speaks, she’s proud to hear her voice is steady. “When do we get started?”