Work Text:
The snow came without warning and by evening the entire city was coated in ice. Frozen flakes drifted down, swirled by the breeze in a misleadingly beautiful scene. A blanket of white, undisturbed by tracks by all who knew to stay inside where it was warm, but it was not entirely untouched.
Jack’s feet had long since gone numb. The meager wrappings did little to keep in his body heat that was stolen by the frost with each passing minute. His knuckles cracked and bled from the grip he held his crutch with. He had given Jules his shawl to tuck her hands into for warmth. How could he not? The poor girl had been shivering since the first flake fell.
It was ironic. Just a day ago, Jack would have killed for some ice to cool the burning infection in his foot. The skin was still red and angry, but it was liable to blacken soon if his instincts told him anything. He needed to get heat into himself again somehow.
Gritting his teeth, Jack winced as he pushed himself up from the ground with his crutch, gingerly shuffling on his good foot until he regained his balance. He briefly tapped the hunched figure of Jules with the wooden tip before planting the crutch back onto the street with a muffled thack.
Jules lifted her head, sending powdery snow falling from the ratty shawl’s folds. Her face looked too weary for her young age, Jack thought.
“C’mon, we need to get moving,” Jack grumbled. The cold had even sapped the strength from his jaw and forced him to mumble through barely parted lips.
The girl didn’t struggle to stand but she still shivered with every movement. The shawl wasn’t nearly enough to guard her from the elements and Jack doubted her long hair protected her any more than his greying beard.
Jack hopped forward, leveraging his weight onto the wooden crutch before picking it up and planting it forward once again. The tip caught a patch of ice, hidden underneath the thickening snowfall, and clattered to the ground as Jack’s center of gravity fell out from underneath him.
His injured foot shot out by instinct. The swollen, previously numb limb now tore searing pain up Jack’s leg as he nearly bit through his tongue in trying to hold back a shout of pain.
The impact of the fall rattled his old bones, dazing him as Jules rushed forward, her arms already reaching out to help Jack back upright.
The older man opened his mouth to protest against the assistance, but the fresh hot blood that filled his mouth muted his words beyond recognition instead into a grunt as he was hauled to his foot once more, this time leaning on the young woman he’d met just hours before.
He hummed a thanks as he spit out a glob of red blood into the white snow. It steamed for a moment before even that began to freeze. A shiver racked through Jack’s body then as he felt the sweats kick up once more from the fever he had been battling for days now.
“Shit,” Jack cursed. He gratefully took the offered crutch from Jules’ shaking hands.
“We need to get inside, somehow,” the woman insisted. Her warm brown eyes held the worry that Jack had wanted to avoid. He’d never needed to beg for help before and he wasn’t keen to start now. But he understood the gravity of the situation. It was snowing in London in July. His infection was getting worse by the day but that would be the least of his problems if he froze to death overnight.
The sun had set mere minutes ago but the temperatures just kept dropping. Lights flickered through the windows of nearby homes as the two unfortunate souls hobbled by slowly.
Looking in through the illuminated glass panes was like peering into a picturebook of what could have been for Jules and Jack: families sat down at dinner tables, warm in the glowing light of flickering candles and steam heaters if they still had power, all encompassed within hard stone walls that were so frigid from the outside.
No one answered the doors when they knocked. Had they not heard? Or were they being ignored? Surely this was the time to open one’s home to the needy, Jules muttered angrily.
Jack huffed out a laugh, a cloud of vapor occluding his face momentarily. “It’s easier to pretend for them.”
“Pretend what?”
Jack looked sidelong at the girl. Clearly she wasn’t used to life on the street, not like Jack was anyway. “Like they don’t see us.”
The two trudged on.
“What’s brought you out here, Jules? Why aren’t you inside a warm home all cozied up next to your husband,” probed Jack. Privacy-invading questions were normally left until much later than mere hours after meeting, but God would have to forgive him for his bluntness in the face of a fast-approaching death.
Jules’ hands still shook even as she steadied the handicapped man. Her eyes searched the darkness of every window they passed, hoping for a sign of life. She didn’t look at Jack when she responded.
“I don’t have one,” she said simply. “I was a factory girl… relied on my hands for my livelihood. When one of the machines crushed them, I was lucky to not lose them entirely, but they never recovered fully. Not correctly, anyway.”
Jack’s gaze fell to where her grip held onto his arm. The fabric of his shirt sleeve trembled with her fingers and he saw it now for what it was: a tremor, not shivering from the cold, though it certainly didn’t help.
“No mister to take care of you, then? Family?”
Jules shook her head. “No-one permanent. My family made sure to cut those ties when they found out I was pregnant.”
Jack once again found himself looking at the girl differently, as if expecting to see something that wasn’t there.
A glance out of the corner of her eye and Jules knew what he wanted to ask. She sighed, releasing her own cloud behind them like a steam engine chugging away.
“I lost the baby some weeks ago,” she whispered. “Malnutrition, I think. At least that’s what one of the nuns told me.”
“Nuns?”
“I have taken shelter at a chapel a few times before when the weather was poor. It’s just up the road here.” Jules pointed with shaking hands at a bend in the street. “I’m holding out hope their doors are still open.”
Jack followed her gesture with his eyes. His eyesight wasn’t what it used to be, but if he squinted, he was almost sure he saw the flicker of light bouncing off the snow.
“My condolences,” he finally responded grimly.
Jules nodded, taking in the few moments of silence between them as her eyes glittered with near-frozen tears. She quickly blinked them away and cleared her throat.
“What about you?”
The older man blew a raspberry the best he could with chapped and bloody lips.
“Hasn’t been a missus in years now. But aye, there used to be one.” A pause. “Had a daughter, too.”
His tone darkened significantly as he spoke and Jules knew better than to push him to open up further. She knew an unhealed wound when she saw one.
So they continued, limping around the corner of the street, each enveloped in wistful yearning for what they couldn’t have when the large stained glass window came into view. And by the mercy of whatever God there was, a mass of flickering candles illuminated the reds, blues, and yellows like a homing beacon.
Jules sped up the best she could. Even she was limping now as her feet felt frozen solid. If they survived the night it would be a miracle if they came out on the other end with all their toes. Fingers, too.
Jack hobbled after her the best he could, but fell behind in the young woman’s rush to familiar safety.
His cane slipped once again, crashing his already battered body down into the not-so-pillowy cold. Whether it was from ice or a lack of balance, Jack didn’t care as he lay in the snow, staring up at the sky as fat flakes fell onto his eyelashes and collected along his nose.
He was vaguely aware of the sound of knocking as he shifted on the ground only to discover that there was no easier way to lay. Pain radiated throughout his entire being now. It was hard to identify the cause anymore.
His eyes stung as he blinked slower and longer with each second that passed. A lulling feeling of sleep overcame him just then, as two vague figures in black appeared blurry over him before fading into unconsciousness.