title: a howling wilderness summary: Evie comes back home for the first Frye grandchild born and meets Angel. If life is the opposite of death, it makes sense that they should be closely mingled, but that doesn't make it fair or easy. Jacob and Evie talk. music: train by brick + mortar, when the darkness comes pt.2 by shelby merry, recovery by broods
At nine months pregnant, Angel Darling was about the as tall as she was wide, it felt like. Not that she was very tall, which is probably what made carrying around a little assassin, so much worse.
Which she did insist, it was a little Assassin, frequently bemoaning it in Jacob's ear when the baby kicked, and flipped, and woke her up at all hours and gave her no sleep. He took it well, kissing her stomach, softly, and telling them to just wait a little bit more, and Jacob could teach the little one all the best jumps in London. But only if the baby promised to give her and thus - him, some peace.
But waddling or no, the first time she met Evie Frye, she wouldn't let him down. She'd let Evie see, all for herself that Jacob had a respectable home. Not too lavish, but every one of the odd bits and pieces that Henry and Evie had sent back from India displayed on the mantlepiece proudly. Angel's memory encyclopaedic in where they had come from per the letters. Well kept, and with good food on the table.
By way of a decent cook. Angel certainly couldn't do that her self.
And a maid, even if Jacob still didn't understand what they were for apart from cleaning. Granted, even if Angel did try to keep the house herself somewhat (or rather, stopped her notes spilling from her own laboratory downstairs out everywhere), right now there wasn't much hope of seeing her feet let alone anything else domestic.
Jacob wasn't home, out on business still, when they finally arrived from the port. The maid letting them in with a brief announcement of their arrival. Angel struggled to pull herself out of the chair she was reading in to greet for the first time, Evie and Henry.
"Miss Frye, Mister Green." She beams as she rises, it's polite but there was no helping her cheerfulness, though still remembering her manners, she dipped her head in greeting. Her eagerness evident, as she looks them both over for the first time. The man and woman that she had done little better than chase the ghosts of as a Templar, and admired Jacob's tales of, once she had joined the Rooks.
But it was the shock, Evie looked like Jacob, in many ways. But then, not at all. It was Jacob with all the cheerfulness sawn off, though she could still see it. That little sharp pull in the corner of the mouth, that fixed point in the middle of her brow - and that flat, disbelieving way, she looked Angel up and down, which was far too telling of Jacob when he was completely unimpressed. Apparently, she didn't completely believe it - or didn't want to, when she got the letter for her to hurry home, because she was about to be an aunt.
At least Henry was quicker. "Let's not wait on manners, Miss Darling, you look ready to fall over."
That makes her laugh, settling her hand on the stomach of the baby bump. "Only if there is nothing you need first. I have a terrible problem these days: once I sit down, it's hard to get up. So, please, tell me is there anything I might... ?" A polite joke, marching on even if Evie remained silent.
Henry traded a glance, to Evie then back to Angel. Unsure with just what was going on here, or at least, trying to keep some semblance of peace whatever his own reservation. "Just our bags -" be ventured, trying to see how to broach it.
"Molly will show you. I've fixed the upstairs room for you both. It has a very nice view overlooking the park. I hope it is comfortable for you both." Her hand gestures, sweeping up the stairs to the side of the entrance corridor.
The house was not big, it wasn't the estates when she has been the Countess of de Caraman-Chimay. Or the daughter of Handsome Jack in his sprawling playground of Irish lands he'd bought off the destitute during the Famine. It was a modest house by contrast, with room enough for a family to grow in, live in. A cellar, her laboratory and a garden for her grow as many flowers as she wanted, a room for Jacob to smoke and play cards with his Rooks in. Even a sun room, for the worst winter days. Its walls were cream and most of the furniture matched well (Jacob could not be parted from his lounge on the train). Most especially, it was theirs, and all the affection painted every surface as truth, not a veneer of grandeur masking cruelty.
And she was proud of it. For the first time in her life, she had a home with people, good people, to share it with. Jack was dead, and even if the nightmares would never quite go away, she didn't have to be afraid to have those things, anymore.
"Miss Molly, please show Mister Green where their room is, and get Bartley to help with bringing the bags up? Oh, and what was the other thing - "
"Tea, madam?"
"Yes, that, thank you, Molly."
Henry gave her a brief word in thanks before he turned to go with the maid. Which was a good thing at least, because Angel had enough standing on swollen ankles for the time being. Catching a hand on the arm of her chair, she smiled wanly at Evie.
"Please sit, Miss Frye, or I'm going to look terribly rude when I fall over." An attempt was made, and much to Angel's relief, it seemed to make Evie flicker a moment, smiling.
Oh, they might look different but they smiled the same.
"I didn't think Jacob was the kind to keep servants." Evie ventured, an almost idle observation, if not for a line on the edge of her words.
"He wasn't until he realised that I couldn't cook, or clean, and wasn't very practical. But they're all Rooks. Miss Molly was the daughter of... Well, Miss Phillipa, that works in the kitchen, but she didn't want her daughter out on the streets as much as she had to be. Bartley lost his eye for Jacob, but he wouldn't take charity and... I always need an extra hand, as I'm too short." Then there was the far blunter truth of it. Snorting, briefly, that flicker of amusement. "That, and I think it makes Jacob feel better one of his Rooks are in guard. But I can't stand having someone tail me in my own house, so it was a good middle ground." It's offered up without comment to the tone, adjusting herself where she sat, arranging her skirts over the baby bump to sit neatly. A fussing action she just couldn't help most of the time.
But with it, silence descended, as they listened to the sound of luggage being pulled up the stairs distantly. Bartley chattering away to Mister Green. How was the weather, it was good to see him again. Inanely pleasant, and nothing more.
"Yes, he does. When it really matters it, he does. I'm sure you know that." Angel shook her head - slowly but not rudely. "It's fine, by the way. You can ask. I don't mind."
Evie's eyebrows raised, caught off guard. "Ask what?" Like the sense of it didn't cut things in half by measure, that Evie wasn't prickling and Angel having to tiptoe around why. But she was done with that sort of conversation. She had promised herself that, once Jack had died. She would be as honest and straightforward with the people that mattered as she could be.
"What a noted Templar is doing, carrying an Assassin's child? What are my intentions are with Jacob? I know you know what I am, what I've done, I can only imagine how worried you must be." Just because it wasn't true, didn't mean it wasn't justified. "I've done... Some truly awful things and Jacob rushes in with not enough questions first, some times, especially over a pretty face."
Evie's mouth opened, then closed, in a sharp little click that said it all, really. Angel still had that skill after all, of reading people, picking at their little ticks and nerves, and maybe at another time, another place, she might have pressed on it. But right now, with it acknowledged, she waits.
"What do you want from this?" Evie ventures, at long last, but at least that is honest. Enough that Angel can let her shoulders relax at last.
To one very simple answer: "This. All I want is this."
"This? This house? A baby?" Evie's frown deepens, watching, hovering, hanging on it.
"Maybe that's part of it. But not like that. I want a house where it's a little too cold at night, so I have to curl up against the man I care about very much. I want to worry about my sister in law and her husband, if they've got enough blankets when they come to stay and listen to them complain that the floor boards creak a little loud in their room. I want to buy gifts for the people who work in my house, that pretend they're surprised when they get it, even though they saw me buying them. I want to know, every day, that the world is kinder and more lovely than I was ever allowed to believe. That I can be kind in it."
It must not have been what Evie was expecting to hear, from someone with Angel's reputation, judging by the look on her face. Maybe that was Jacob rubbing off on Angel, she supposes, but it was worth being a little unpredictable just to see the look on people's faces like that.
"That's a very nice sentiment. I have heard you're good at saying those to the right people."
Angel deserved that, and at least enough time passed, that it no longer stung so. "Those kinds of people didn't want my sentiments."
"What do they want?"
"To hear that I find their cock as exciting as they find it, and praise it constantly."
Evie choked, looking absolutely winding, thumping a hand in her chest to cough out the rest of it. "Excuse me?"
"Tell me I'm wrong. All those years hunting Templars here, didn't you see it? Didn't hear it in Starrick's tone? Maybe it's not always their anatomy that they say, but isn't it what they really want to hear anyway?" Angel raised her brows with a look, trying not to laugh.
"I hadn't thought of it like that," Evie was pressing her lips together like she couldn't help it either.
Angel crinkles her eyes in a smile. But it isn't a full one. These days, she had many of them, enough that it feels strange to be off like this. "When I first sent to Jacob, I had been out of the asylum for only a few days that time. They have a new treatment for hysteria. Have you heard of them?"
Evie, silent, watching - waits. Then shakes her head.
"They strap you to a chair, they gag you, tighten it so you cannot thrash too much. Then they lower you backwards into an ice bath. You are left in there, for the count of one minute. It doesn't matter how much you scream at them to stop. They will not. They will this to you over, and over, and over again. I do not know how it is for other women - but the physicians that did it to me, were Templars, and with Jack's instructions, they were... thorough."
The silence went on after she finished speaking, Evie watching her, and Angel running her hands over the bump again. Absent comfort more this time. That was over, Jacob would never send her to such a place. Promised to kill every damn Doctor he knew.
"Before I came to the Rooks, I find it a good way to describe my life. Moments thrust afraid into the cold, before being shut away from sight again, left alone with nothing. I would kill, I'm not pretending about it, then I would be put somewhere far away out of reach. When I protested, if I expressed remorse, Jack would make me pay for it like... that... to remind me what it would be like without him. Would make it so that there was nowhere for me to go. I believed him. I believed in him and that was how life was and he was just doing all of this to protect me. That if anyone but him got the chance, they would kill me. Even when I did realise it was wrong, that I couldn't hurt people like that anymore I still expected..." Angel swallows, her hands knotting up tightly for one moment, white-knuckled, then looser, as she breathed out, forced it away.
"When I met Jacob, that changed. Jacob could have killed me, and what's worse was I was ready to let him. I don't think I even really believed he would listen. I think I just hoped... "
"He'd hear the name and act on it?" Evie finishes, at long last speaking up.
Angel nods, slowly, realising it fully for the first time in years, perhaps, but only now, that she so desperately wanted to live, how little she had wanted to previously. It had not felt like it then. Consumed as she had been, in thwarting Jack, it seemed like just one part of the price to pay in atonement.
"... But he does things. He sees there is a wrong, and he fixes it. Sometimes it's reckless, and it makes me think I'm going grey, but... I don't think I'd change it, not for the world."
Evie's silence this time, was not so sharp, nor calculated. But thoughtful none the less. "You see the best in my brother," she says finally, like delivering a judge's verdict. Whether that was good or bad, Angel could not tell from tone alone. Where Jacob was filled with animation, Evie was ... staid.
"Just like he sees the best in me. Even when no one else would have taken the risk, he didn't kill me. He believed me, and he helped me... understand I could want things, more than just an end to my pain and loneliness. He didn't use me, want me to make the Assassin's weapons, or even wanted to... poach me, so to speak, into bed, to mock the Templars." Her smile is wry, bitter, and far too familiar to the patterns. A look that she gives Evie, that says, she knew well what that felt like.
Evie looked suitable appalled, but Angel continued before letting herself linger to spare any other details. "I don't think he meant to or intended it, but he did, just by being himself with me." and the finality of it, whole and real and true that had become apparent to her, every time she looked at him. "I care about him, in a way I did not know it was possible to care until he let me make the choice to join the Rooks."
It's as far she could put such a thing to words or would be able to venture in. Jacob - he always teased and laughed it away. Acted as if... she had surely been mistaken when she did muddle it out to him. But that was Jacob for you, happy to see the best in everything around him, but she had to nail it into his head sometimes with a hammer to get him to accept he deserved it back. It only made her more resolute to say it to him, as often as it could be allowed.
"I'm glad he has you." Evie's voice is soft, but sure, and finally that bite was taken out of her tone. "I never thought he'd take up this -" she gestured, openly around the room. House, she means, settled family, she steps around.
"He was the one that suggested it. When I was about six months, he realised I was having problems getting in and out of the train. So typically, he just went and fixed it." Which the image of Jacob asking for a loan, from a respectable back, in the name of Sir Jacob Frye, always made Angel laugh. "I am glad he has you too. I was so worried you wouldn't come when I asked him to send for you."
"You sent for me?" that apparently, hadn't been factored in, eyebrows raised.
"I did." That, despite all her cheerfulness up until this point, slips away. Steadying herself. Her hands settled on her stomach. Bracing there in comfort - but in fear, too. "He's going to need you, Miss Evie. He's going to need the one person that understands how scared he is, but who won't make him say it, especially before the end."
That - that was downright alarming, and Evie lent forward, snapped too. "What on earth are you talking about?"
"The same thing that all women have to think about before they go to childbed." She swallows, fixed in it because there was no backing down from this now. She must tell someone, and it could be no one else. That she had to be sure of. "You know what I mean."
The other woman, shifted, her hands settling onto her knees, watching the door, then back to Angel again, who never broke her gaze from her. "You can't be certain of it, no one is." But it hardly could sound completely determined. It was said like the tenuous thing it is.
"I am. I have been for quite some time. I didn't know it. But I do now. I saw it. In the temple I saw down in Cornwall, that belonged to the famous Knights." Angel sighs, brow pinched momentarily. "Did Jacob mention it, when he wrote?"
"He mentioned that you receive... Visions, in your sleep, of a kind." but the question in the words, said to how far that went.
Angel nods in confirmation. "I do. They usually lead to temples, sights, belonging to the first civilisation artefacts. They are often disjointed, confused. It can take me months to even get a hint of where to start."
"He did mention that, yes. But I thought they pertained to just that?"
She hums, softly, puzzling it out. "They did. Or most of the time, do. Until we went to one, and we saw... We saw one of these ancient devices. When I approached, it illuminated... Like it has always been waiting for me? Like it had something to show me? I don't know how to describe how it felt. Always feels. But that'd be closest." Her left hand flexed, the light blue marks were just visible where they wrapped around her fingers, hid under her lace cuff, chosen especially to hide them.
"I don't know what passed outside - Jacob has never told me. I think... I think something took over, for a time. I felt myself speaking, but I wasn't the one talking. I couldn't have been, I could barely form words for the things I saw."
That had Evie's interest, if her lean forward, in a way that was concern certainly, but far more than just that was anything like that. "What? What did you see?"
And for once, for once in such a long time, Angel tried to say what it was exactly she had seen. "Everything. I don't mean that lightly." It shakes, in her voice, tired, so tired, so little in it, but so, so full. "I saw the first beings, rise and fall. I saw the earth change, heat and cool, lava to ice. I saw men, and women, in all the inconsequential natures, kill kings and set fire to cities. Great men gain the world and lose it in one second. To a world filled with light, strange vehicles, technology that could take us to the stars. I saw the moon created out of broken rocks, and I saw mankind walk upon it." It bubbles up, like madness, faster and faster. "I saw us. I saw you and Jacob as children, I saw how different and how much the same you are to Ezio, Altair, Achilles, as children just the same, carried inside of each of us. The Assassins, the Templars, how stupid and little and important we all are. I saw it all, Evie. I saw this."
It chokes out of her, it makes her weep, it had made her weep every time she thought of it all. Not because of grief, for it was far too much to grieve over. But simply to be filled with so much, that it must go somewhere to help her understand it, for her body, her mind, was all that she had to do it. Little as she could each time she went back to it. As if her body must react to so much some how, and tears helped work her through.
"And that's how you know you'll...?"
"Yes. But... I don't know. It wasn't clear. I thought what I saw might have been your mother. But then Jacob bought this house, the room was -" The same, and she clears her throat to carry on as she ever did. "I don't know exactly what will pass, but I know, it won't be easy and I knew, that whatever is coming... He was going to need you by his side for it if there is going to be any hope for it all."
When the silence fell this time, it was much longer, far deeper. Angel, in her own thoughts, and Evie, at a loss, it seemed for the inevitable fate most women faced. How much knowing so much changed everything, and yet, how nothing changed at all. "Is there... Anything I can do, for you?"
That - that Angel did not expect. Clear on her face she had done what she usually did. Spent so long, worrying, planning, meticulously moving things around for the people she cared about, that what was left for her in all that? What would give her comfort? She hardly knew. She had already done... everything practical that mattered. Organised the midwife for Jacob to call on. The Doctor for Molly to get afterwards. All her instructions that she had couched in her worrying without ever letting on what else she knew.
"... I could not... Ask for anything much else, Miss Evie. But... after everything I have done, I find it hard to speak to Him, anymore." Her eyes lower, watching the carpet rather than looking at the Assassin's face. "... perhaps if you could say a prayer, on my behalf, I would be... very glad." It's shy, half spoken in a murmur. The sort of thing she tried never to bring up or speak of, most times. It meant too much for that.
It, perhaps, was not much to ask for. But when Evie reached over and snagged their fingers together in a sure grip, it meant the world. Holding fast, their gazes meeting evenly, with one firm affirmation. "I will, Miss Angel."
And when they smiled, this time, it was far more earnest, the tension, finally, finally easing out of the room.
Enough that when Henry poked his head in from finally unpacking, to say that it was all settled, Jacob, in turn, followed not so long later, they were talking quite evenly over tea, like all the tension had been nothing much at all.
Though neither Henry nor Jacob quite knew what to make of it when Angel slid her eyes across, to Evie with a smile so innocent butter wouldn't melt in her mouth as she gives her a knowing look. "I didn't have to lie to Jacob about it though, he knows it's quite my favourite."
The next few days passed leisurely. Jacob briefed Evie and Henry on what had changed in the city, though the constant competitions had more to do with Evie keeping Jacob busy until it was evening and time to return to the house.
The routine to that was, for all the house had never been so full, easy. The dinner set out, between the Rooks that made up the household staff, the three Assassins and Angel with her now belly so big she could hardly fit in behind the chair. But the house was filled just the way she had always wanted it to be, treasured so deeply. With laughter and easiness, Jacob regaling with this story or that of the Rooks escapades, Henry embarrassing Evie about customs she had misunderstood in India, Evie's tales about the great and beautiful things she had seen for the first time. Raucous and loud, some tinge of life she had so sorely always wanted that lit the room brightly.
In was near dawn, a week later, that Jacob came running out of their room like a mad thing. Banging on Evie and Henry's door to get them up. Get them moving, boiling water and to see to Angel, before he - with one shoe on and no shirt ran for the midwife Angel had vetted herself for his peace of mind beforehand. Dragging her out of bed and back to the little upstairs room. That Angel still in the bed, drenched in sweat as she went into labour, holding Evie's hand tightly.
And there she would stay for the next fifteen hours.
It didn't seem to end, the haze of it. It went on and on and on. Jacob paced back and forth, outside the door in the corridor with Bartley and Henry. Tense as a fox to any noise, any little change, half a second from breaking down the door when Angel first wailed in pain. Standing up every time the door opened, waiting for news. Sitting down again when there was none. Eyes following the bloody fabric that came out of the room in increased worry.
Looking to Evie in those moments when she emerged, their eyes meeting briefly as she did her best to explain what was happening that the midwife said this was quite normal for a first birth, they often took a long, long time. Before another echo of that unending pain burst out, his eyes snapping to the source. That's when he saw Angel, through that crack in the door. Hair stuck to her, drenched in sweat with her eyes screwed shut, blood all over the sheets, with the midwife coaxing along with the women next to her, in more pain he than he could understand - or worse, stop. Not even help. In almost every way, he was useless to Angel, right now. Then Evie was called back, and the door was shut on him again, leaving him standing there, just as he went to follow her in.
Lost, half shaken, he turned back to Henry. Angel, he half started, was not very big, how much blood - ? and he stopped there when Henry cut him off with one stiff shake of his head and firm shove. A drink, they were getting him a drink. A sharp push to march him down the stairs to the kitchen.
Didn't offer him distracting words, just one tall glass of whiskey, and a call to Little Jack, somewhere near seven now, and prone to running errands for the rest of the Rooks, to go and fetch some company, anyone at all. It's not so much later, that there were five or six women, crammed into the Frye kitchen, around the small table, pouring him enough to keep him busy. Men and women who had children themselves, that could offer the words of assurance that only someone who had been through it themselves could. Enough to give Jacob, so uncharacteristically quiet, something to latch onto.
A full day went by, like that, the Rooks, Mr and Mrs Disraeli, Alec, tapping in and out of their rounds to keep him in good company. Filled, save for the silence when Evie appeared, met Jacob's gaze, shook her head and went to fetch more of the boiling water to take back upstairs.
Until in the evening, little after ten, there was a deafening scream that quieted everyone in the room and then — silence. One loud, and complete silence that went on and on, a frantic running of feet on the roof above, before —
A wail. Shakey, small, and brand new, echoed through the walls for the first time.
Jacob lept from his chair, scrambling out of the room. Taking the stairs two at a time, Henry following after him just as fast. The cheer erupting from the people gathered downstairs, wishing him the best as the two of them disappeared.
He burst into the room, to the smell of blood and sweat. The mess of childbirth quickly being cleaned away but lingered in the air and not so different to death. Evie, standing there holding a baby swaddled and just cleaned, was waiting for him. The baby, a little squashed, kept crying in her arms. Did babies always look so squashed? Because he didn't think he'd seen anything look so small and so new all at once. He hadn't seen them so...
Wordless, he looks to his hands - his killer's hands, clean and stained all at once, and realised, he'd never held something so delicate. But with a guiding motion Evie reached and showed him in how to hold something that small. With one muttered admission in his ear: she didn't know how to hold the damn thing either.
It choked the fear in his throat as he took his - his -?
"Son." is what Evie tells him, as she, Jacob and Henry peered down at the squashed little face, that finally safe in his father's arms he stopped his crying. Blue eyes opened, for the first time looking up, confused and dazed at the world to which he had entered.
He stepped forward, immediate, because the thought, the first thought was: did Angel know her boy had her eyes, just like Jacob had wanted?
And Angel, his Angel, who had been watching him unmoving in the bed, smiled, softly, beckoning him closer. Closer he was happy to go - guiding the boy into her arms for the first time, his forehead leaning against hers. Nuzzling against her brow with the tip of his nose to press a soft kiss there, then another and another and another. "You did it, luv. You did it, we've got a boy."
One tired hand reaches up, stroking along the side of his face. "Fatherhood suits you, Jacob. Promise me you'll look after him?" Because even as she touches Jacob, her eyes stay low on the little boy. Small and looking around, exhausted already by the surrounds, but there. Safe. Between them, with Jacob's arms around her and hers around the tiny form that was their child. God forbid anyone see him cry, but there was no helping the way he pressed his face into her hair and breathing her in, and she curled tightly back into him.
"'Course I will, I'll have you hounding me every day won't I?" He's so quiet in his affirmation, but direct as he pulls back to look at her properly. Pushing her damp hair away from her face, watching her eyes close. "Angel? Angel?"
But without him to hold her, she no longer had the strength to hold her arms up, and the child slipped in her hold as she began to fall away completely from them both. He picked the boy up, quick as he could, as the women that had been present lurched forward, sharp and immediate to their feet. His free hand bracing her head as she sunk away into unconsciousness. "Angel?!" the bark in his voice was panicked, "Angel!"
Molly pushed him back, immediately stepping in to press her ear to Angel's chest, for the only confirmation that mattered - "She's still breathing! Get a doctor!"
And for the second time on the same day, Jacob was left helpless, standing there.
The only thing that flickered as real at the end of that long cold dark, was Evie's hand on his shoulder, a worry flickering on her face - but one simple affirmation with it. She wasn't going anywhere, and like they always did, they wouldn't give into it. "Jacob, we're here."
It's not much, but right then, it's the only thing that mattered as she guided him, not daring to take the boy clutched to his chest from his hands, to sit back down.
By morning, the doctor had come and gone, talked at length with the midwife and with Evie. Sparing him only one pitiful glance as he shuffled out of the room.
It said everything that needed to be mentioned without saying a damn word.
Angel was fading, quietly, but surely, on the bed she'd fought so long to give life on. All wrapped up in one space. Her long black hair, tendrils knotted together was all over the pillows - the nice ones, the ones she said she liked best. Her hands laid neatly arranged like she was nothing but sleeping (maybe someone else could believe it, but not him, not when he knew, Angel didn't sleep so neatly, she draped and wriggled and stretched and wormed her way against him), and not the word he'd heard the Doctor mutter. Childbed fever. The same kind that took his own mother, by any account that mattered.
He wasn't sure when the baby was taken off him, he barely looked at the time, or the window, or anything else but her. About the time he started to cry again, hungry, and wanting the one person who was supposed to tend to that. He rose, holding him, bringing him closer to Angel, like maybe - if she heard him, she'd -
"Let me take him, Jacob." Evie was there like she'd never left. Just at his elbow, guiding him through the motions of something he couldn't just barge through like a warehouse door.
"She didn't want a wet nurse," he struggles on the things that had seemed so clear, before this, when he was lost to what else to do. "She wanted to do it herself."
- And Evie holds fast, fingers gripping into his forearm, not with force but reassurance. "She will. But it'll sap her strength right now, and she'll need it when she wakes up."
It's hope and not much else, but it's enough to let him let go of his son nodding on those words. When she wakes up.
Then he was alone in the room, and with nothing else to do, because leaving the room was impossible, he dragged his chair over to the side of the bed. Watching her features twitch in the throws of fever and blood loss, her skin burning hotter than he'd ever felt it, not even when they had been in the temple together. Her body shuddering as she tried to fight off things he couldn't see. Mumbling soundless and fearful words.
He did the only thing he had ever been to do when invisible things came for her in the dark. He held onto her. His fingers fishing for hers, twining them together with both his hands, resting his weight on his elbows against his knees.
Hunching over like that he passed the hours, only dimly aware that it passed at all. Of when Henry pressed a warm drink into his hands, spiced and filling to keep him going. Barely even tasting it as he drank it in a hasty gulp so he did not have to let go of her. Until eventually, it was night again, and Evie stepped up, to touch him on the shoulder, digging her fingers in to drag him up and out of that haze of thoughts in the silence. Angel twitched again, eyes darting behind closed lids.
A pattern daring to repeat itself, as he sat, watching her, "do you think it would have been different if Father had been there, to be there with her?"
Evie inhaled, soft and slow. "I don't know, Jacob."
He grunts, as sharp on his father's failings as he had ever been. "Well I am here, and I'm not leaving her."
"No one will ask you to do that." Her fingers squeezed, briefly reaching over to adjust the blankets about Angel's thin body. "And if a templar tries it right now, they'll go through me first, before I let them get in here." Fixed, hard, the promise of a Frye. " - she looks so small, like this."
"I haven't seen her like this since... " hard to admit, the fear, real and sharp in his gut. "... when I first met her, she looked like she'd crawled out of a grave. Swore I wouldn't let her get like that again." He kissed her clammy hand, like a reminder of it.
Evie watched her brother. At a loss, for more than just the promise she had made Angel. "It might never have changed anything... " A lot, a lot for Evie to admit. "... but it might've, too."
It isn't much, it didn't undo time. But it was one assurance, that there would be someone at his back, to give him the space, the time. That London, right now - was someone else's problem, that the right thing wasn't the unending war, the right thing was staying here.
Jacob swallows, rubbing his thumb against the back of Angel's hand as she whimpered again in her sleep. "What if she doesn't wake up, Evie?"
And with it, she pushed back a bit of hair that had fallen in his face. "What if she does? Are you going to give up on her? That doesn't sound like Jacob Frye."
He snorts, shaking his head, goaded like only family can goad because it always worked. "Never."
Another silence. Longer this time. Lowering his head to press his face against her hands. Angel twitched all over in her in fever, a small hum in her throat, wordless fear against the dark behind her eyelids.
Evie gripped harder, action in intent words. "Father wasn't there." If there could be a more condemning word from her, Jacob couldn't imagine it. "You are. Right now. You said never. Show her what she's fighting for. Show her never. It doesn't look like it's very pleasant in there for her, she's going to need it."
He frowns, eyes breaking away from the mother of his child for just a moment. Looking up, and how lost he was trying to work out just how to do that - "How?" Jacob croaks it, looking for something, anything.
To that, unfortunately, Evie could only shrug. "She said you reminded her every day that the world could be a little bit better when she couldn't believe it herself in her loneliness. What did you both do?"
Her hand slips away, moving away with the little words of guidance she could give to something so far out of both their hands. Heading towards the door, her footsteps still assassin quiet after all these years, still by instinct they moved on their father's training. But, no longer, in everything he taught them.
Right now that guidance had something to it, and looking down at Angel, weak, weaker than even the day he first met her, he took a breath and did the one thing she had done for him.
He opened his mouth, and he told her about everything he saw. Reminded her of everything good thing he could think of, of the people that had come to wish them well (their family), of how she was planning to decorate the nursery (their home), he asked, what she wanted to name their little boy?
He listed off every ridiculous name he could think of, every sort of name he'd imagine she'd hate. Those dreadful names he knew she'd crinkle her nose up. Ezekiel, Boris, Richars, Eustace. A pause after each other to wait for her to sit up and tell him no.
When none came, he didn't slow or stop.
He described how the little boy gurgled, reminded her what she was missing in these first few precious days, the ones she talked about when they laid in bed together. That one day that little boy would walk and she had to be there, to encourage him to be careful, because his father was going to be too excited to get him to run. That the boy was sleeping now, and he was kicking his legs, already, just like he had felt through her belly when he kissed it. That - that she was finally going to be able to see her feet again after all her bemoaning and wriggling her toes against his back when she wanted to wake up him to rub her ankles.
He told her about the stars she liked to watch out the window, told her about the moon that she carefully mapped out was glowing brightly but she was missing days in her almanack if she did not wake up.
When the sun rose, he told her roughly its best colours and asked her to tell him better ones instead of purple and slightly pink-purple, not the way she would describe it, he knew. She'd say lavender and salmon. He told her about the people moving in the street, that came and went with every dodgy bit of gossip he'd heard that always made her laugh. About Cooper's chickens being chased around the park, or the Bootmaker's dog chewing up the good leather order.
He talked, until exhaustion got him, until the words had stopped making sense, and he said the only ones that did. He asked her not to leave him and their little boy alone without her. Please, Angel, he couldn't do this without her. You promised we would do this together.
Somewhere, on that, the third night, he finally ran out of words, and with nothing else to say, he fell asleep on the edge of their bed, holding onto her hand.
--
In the early hours of the dawn, Evie crept quietly when she heard stillness in the room, poking her head through the door. Jacob was sound asleep, laying across Angel, holding her hand tightly.
Angel's fingers were gripping his back.
Evie paused only long enough to drape a blanket over her brother's shoulders before leaving them be with a brief word to the rest of the house, to leave them both be, come morning.
--
When dawn broke, Angel blinked open her eyes to the spring light streaming through the window, mottled by lace patterns that diffused it. Illuminating the dim room in the slow adjustment of her gaze. There was not one bit of her that didn't hurt, she realised, but so overwhelmed by it in turn, that it did no matter.
Instead her gaze settled to fall on the only thing that did matter. Jacob's eyes meeting hers, as his own blinked open, watching her like he scarcely believed it, disturbed by her movements. "Hey," she croaked out of a dry throat.
"Hey," he says back. So quiet it only stirred only the floating dust, dancing in the sunbeam. Words as soft as the light. "I missed you."
It isn't much when she jerks her chin up, as much strength as she has right then. But it's enough, to get him to move, sliding up to her side in the bed, gently shifting to cradling her into his chest, so often he moved her like glass, but this was more than that. It was touching every bit of her, and scarcely disturbing her, all at once to let her curl into him in response. Turning into one another, their eyes shifting closed into a finally proper sleep the way time had made preferable: next to each other.
"I promise I'm not going anywhere." she murmurs back before sleep takes them both again.
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"a howling wilderness"
pt one. }
pt two. }
pt three }
pt four. }