welcome to hell

The pain has a rhythm like a hundred thousand soldiers stamping the earth, like the roiling sea that tosses the great ship constructed in hubris, threatening to reduce it back into the splinters of the boards of the wood from which it was made. The pain is the Army and the Navy at once, and Belle is withstanding their onslaught while the man—Oliver Twist—proposes marriage to her sister.

“—a brief but significant acquaintance—” Twist is calling it as Belle marches down the length of the table opposite the lovers’ tableau.

“—knew from the very instant—” he is claiming when she grips the corner of the table, feeling Jack’s eyes on her, pushing off and fighting her body’s impulse to double over.

“—and the security I could provide you thanks to my comfortable position, my generous salary, and my valued friendships must not be weighed against the simple pleasure I shall feel each time I am graced with your radiant smile, though of course they are factors which you are welcome to consider. So, in conclusion…” Twist says, very much sounding as though there is a great deal more he intends to say.

“No,” says Belle. It’s so easy, actually, to get straight to the point.

Twist looks up at her with disbelieving eyes as she sidesteps him and stares hard at her sister, who is utterly aflutter and barely restraining the second assent that will probably come at a startling volume and pitch.

She yearns to tell Fanny more than she knows she has time to say, with pain sharpening its knives on her very bones: that a brief acquaintance is not enough to judge whether this is a man to whom she will want to show her drawings, that a lifetime of security is insufficiently fantastical for someone who practices kissing on bananas, that they weren’t little girls for this, for this, no matter what society would have them take on faith.

“Fanny,” she groans from between her teeth.

Her sister’s wide eyes are on her.

“Belle,” she replies.

Belle takes another step and staggers, sinks, slams the heel of her hand to her chest like a seawall against the hot swell of pain, looks up to see…

…Jack on his feet next to her sister. With Belle on her knees, closer to his chair than Fanny’s after the collapse, and holding her hand in such a way that it could easily be mistaken for an emotional gesture, a tender covering of her heart, she can feel what this looks like even before she registers the reactions of those assembled.

“I knew you really liked him!” Fanny exclaims, clapping her hands together and expressing at least as much joy over this horrible, accidental proposal as her own (which is more proof Belle is too winded to wield towards discouraging the rushed match).

“My daughter is so full of modern ideas!” their father chortles, acting to hide his discomfited uncertainty and recast his child’s erratic behaviour in front of the important guests. “Imagine the woman doing it instead of the man! Quite entertaining! Good fun!”

Belle’s gaze swings to Sneed, trying to smile, ignoring what his medical training must be urging him to see in favour of humouring Governor Fox, agreeing in order to stay in his favour. Coward.

She looks again to Jack, who would and will not ignore her pain, but her glare repels him. He stands while she kneels, and it is another humiliation at his hand, that hand that cuts so quick. After the way he spoke to her, she would never ask him to be her husband. With her eyes, she tells him, but she can feel other eyes too, eyes in the heads of people who are waiting, and she doesn’t want those people to think she’s weak. The invalid or the charade? The pity or the forced congratulations from everyone but Fanny (whose congratulations would be genuine) and their mother (who would abstain altogether)?

“Your radiant smile,” Belle says, a deadness in her eyes as the pain storms inside her, turning her nerves to lightning strikes. She lifts a hand to Jack, offering it to him.

“The security of your comfortable position,” he responds, sliding his fingers across her palm to take hold.

She would howl with laughter over the bad-mannered boldness of using the words to declare that he’s taking her for her money—possibly her parents’ greatest fear—if she had the faculty. And if she didn’t despise him.

When Jack pulls her to her feet, his eyes, all concern, do a rapid dance with hers. Then, he smiles tightly around at the people applauding with what is likely more confusion than delight.

“Get me to my bedroom,” she quietly begs.

“Allow us a few moments to collect ourselves,” Jack tells rather than requests of the room, giving his and Belle’s respectful goodbyes with a sharp nod.

He guides her out, supporting her weight, apparently before her parents can decide what to do or how to stop them.

“May I continue now?” Belle hears Twist inquire, and sighs in relief when Fanny says, “Maybe you’d better not.”

—

Jack exhales in frustration, pacing. Belle’s hands flail behind her back as she attempts to unfasten her dress on her own.

“Just let me help,” he says. Again.

“I will do it myself. You are not my servant. I’m not some sort of princess.”

“Unfortunate choice with the crown then, wasn’t it?” he questions snidely, pointing at the tiara tucked into her styled hair.

Belle groans in annoyance, then pain, her hands flying to cradle her front as her breathing grows rapid and shallow. Jack lunges towards her, attempting to straighten her posture in order to ease the passage of air into her lungs. It’s exponentially more worrying when she doesn’t bark at him to keep back or slap his fingers from her neck as he seeks her pulse.

“Take a seat,” he entreats softly. “Please.”

She allows him to steer her to the edge of her bed. Without waiting—why make Belle waste precious breaths on manners?—Jack sits down too, shifting backwards until he can use both hands to open the back of her dress. The action exposes a white chemise and, over top, a corset he’s morally loose enough to know how to slacken with a few artful tugs.

“Deeper breaths now,” he urges, rubbing firmly alongside her spine with the heel of his hand.

“The trouble isn’t my ability to inhale,” she wheezes, undermining her words, “it’s the pain.” At least she’s finally speaking to him about what’s going on. Jack’s sure that a dialogue, formed around mutual respect, is crucial to— “You nitwit.”

“Well. I’ve never had to undress someone who hates me before. Stand,” Jack requests.

Belle does, and Jack moves quickly to unfasten the rest of her black gown. It slips partway down on its own, but he gets off the bed to work it past the large skirt she wears beneath.

“I don’t hate you,” she argues while he struggles with the fabric. “I just don’t care about you at all.”

“Oh, then I’m sure we’ll be very happy together. Big happy family: you, me, Lady Fanny, and the Lettuce.”

“The Lettuce?”

“Just a special term of endearment Fagin and I have for our dear Mr. Twist.”

Jack huffs, dress successfully around Belle’s feet, and glances up to realize he now occupies a pose identical to the one Belle did earlier. He is the future Mr. Belle Fox, twice over. It’s hard to say whether she notices, hands on her waist and jaw clenched as she seemingly attempts to master another surge of pain. He’s always believed he would do whatever possible to heal the misfortunates who landed on the operating table, but he looks at Belle and wants to do more than what’s possible to heal the ache in her, even when she prods at the ache she’s put in him. He pushes to his feet and removes her loosened corset, the avowal that she doesn’t care squeezing his heart as he sets her free.

“I didn’t mean to propose,” Belle asserts, holding his gaze firmly in hers. “To make that perfectly clear.”

“I’m not actually sure that you did—though, admittedly, I was rather swept up in the romance of the moment: the most despised acquaintance of my former life producing a deeply off-putting display of emotion, succeeded by you crumpling to the ground in obvious pain.” A sarcastic smirk pinches the corner of his mouth as he reanimates the horrible scene. “I nearly swooned.”

“Yes. Well. Good.” Jack’s eyebrows twitch upward. “Good that you understood,” Belle clarifies crossly.

“Thoroughly. The glorified butcher has gotten it through his thick skull.”

“‘Glorified butcher’? I would never—”

“No, but your mother would.”

“My mother…?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he insists with a sigh. His arms go around her to feel for the ties of her underskirt. Neither of them comment on how she sags a bit in his hold, how his fingers slow when her hands run up his arms. But she’s only using him to hold herself up.

The underskirt, heavy like a raincloud, falls.

“Lie down,” Jack says. “I’ll examine you.”

“My mother,” Belle repeats, maneuvering herself onto the pillows he readies for her head. “She doesn’t speak for me, whatever she said to you.”

“Seeing as you don’t know what she said, how can you be so sure you disagree with her?”

“I know two words of what she said, and I know that they hurt you.” She grips his wrist and he feels compelled to meet her eye.

Jack can’t say it aloud—that he was hurt, twice, first by Lady Fox’s blunt, belittling language, and then by her daughter’s easy rejection of him (triggered, of course, by his preceding rejection of her). And Belle can’t apologize, apparently, not properly, though her expression steps in when the words don’t come. They speak better with their hands though, don’t they? Surgeon’s hazard. Jack swallows and rotates his hand to clasp hers. They share a gentle smile, and then he shifts his focus to the tiara she still wears.

“Lady Belle,” he says with a teasing smile, and, gingerly, lifts the ornament from her hair. Belle settles more comfortably into the pillows.

“Is the pain more or less acute when you’re lying down?” Jack asks as he walks over to her array of medical instruments, lightly twirling the tiara, trying not to think about how easily he could conceal it inside his vest pocket, trying not to wonder whether the stones are obsidian, onyx, or—when they catch the candlelight and give off a cutting gleam—black diamonds.

“Less, just now, but that could be because you’re here.”

He looks back at her over his shoulder.

“Really?”

“No,” she says with a wincing grin, “though there is some relief in not having to pretend my condition is milder than it is to ensure your pride isn’t wounded when you realize you can’t save me.”

Jack stares at her following the rush of words, in the silence that seems to ring. Into the stillness bursts the crack and fizzle of fireworks. He doesn’t care. The heart in his chest thu-thumps.

“Save you?”

She says his name and he almost returns to her side instantly, but his training takes over. He turns back to the table, casting his softening, distorting gaze over the scattered instruments. How can he choose when he can’t see?

“They’re useless,” Belle says, and something in her voice ruptures. “Just come back.”

Steady, Jack tells himself. He draws a long inhalation through his nose and reminds himself that he’s always steady, a cornerstone of his profession. Sure grip on the handle of a saw, tight pinch of his fingers on a needle.