Chapter Text
The door behind Commissioner Donaldson closes with a rusty bang, plunging the room back into the dank, musty semi-darkness. Slowly, as if in a trance, Phileas stumbles back to his place by the wall, aware all too keenly of the gazes of his cellmates that follow his every move – some indifferent, some curious, yet others with open glee and disdain. He wonders distantly if he’s the first Englishman they’ve seen in a place like this, if they don’t find a certain grim delight in the knowledge that he will soon be sharing their fate.
Flogged. He is to be flogged. Like a common criminal. A thief! It wasn’t enough to have his heart flayed open for the whole world to see. No, he is to be flayed on the outside as well. A matching scar to the awful decades-old wound that had been so callously ripped open mere hours ago and left bleeding profusely ever since.
He grins mirthlessly. Leans against the wall, his legs too shaky to be trusted to hold him up much longer. Lets the rough, damp stone take his weight instead. Stares blindly toward the cell window, his thoughts stumbling in a kind of horror-numbed daze as he listens to the cacophony of sounds filtering in from the outside: the methodical, powerful hiss of a whip slicing through the air intermixed with the pitiful, strangled cries of its unlucky victim.
Oh, Estella, what would you think if you saw me now?
He swallows sharply. Snakes a trembling hand into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, fumbling for the thrice-damned newspaper that he’d unthinkingly shoved in there when beating his humiliating retreat from the governor’s mansion. He feels it all too tangibly – a heavy, scalding weight of it, like a brand against his heart.
He takes it out, unfolds with careful if unsteady fingers. The words – too private, too raw, too damning – blur strangely before him, and it isn’t until a single tear drips onto his finger, splattering onto the page, that he realizes he’s crying.
Perhaps, he corrects himself ruefully, it’s best that you can’t.
Hastily he swipes the back of his hand against his traitorously wet cheek. Sucks in a shaky breath. Then another and then another. Steadying himself, pulling himself together.
He’s still an Englishman, for God’s sake. And whatever shred of dignity he still has, he won’t let them take it from him. When they come for him, he will be ready.
***
His carefully shored resolve nearly crumbles, when the door clangs open and two guards walk in, dragging a half-naked and barely conscious man between them, the man’s back crisscrossed with deep, ugly welts – an awful bloody mess. He watches, wide-eyed, as the guards deposit the man in the cell, dropping him carelessly onto the straw-covered floor. Watches as the man curls in on himself with a soft whimper, then begins to crawl awkwardly toward his cellmates, whether in search of comfort or protection or both. Watches as the others quickly surround him, cautious, gentle hands reaching for him from all sides: some carefully wiping away the blood, others simply patting him, letting their hands rest against his skin in a show of sympathetic support.
In that moment he finds himself feeling jealous of that man, of the natural, genuine camaraderie that surrounds him. It’s a foolish feeling, he knows, but he can’t help himself. Because in his eyes right now in this moment this man, as hurt as he is, as miserable as he is, is lucky. Because Phileas doesn’t have that ready support here. Because he knows without a shred of doubt in his mind that none of these people will be swarming over him in the same show of solidarity and comfort when it’s his turn to be tossed, bleeding, back into this cell. Knows there will be no gentle touches, no attempts to soothe what will likely be unimaginable pain.
He can’t blame these people, of course. He’s a stranger to them, an outsider, and they have been open about their feelings toward him, showing him nothing but wariness and open animosity. But at least they’ve been honest about it. Whereas those he considered friends, those he naively deluded himself into believing they cared about him….
Well, it doesn’t matter. The point is he’s alone in here. There is no one he can seek comfort from, no one he can lean on, no one he can trust. Same as it had always been for him out there in the real world as well, even if he foolishly believed a tempting pretense of otherwise. The sooner he accepts it, the better. The easier it will be for him to face what’s coming.
He turns away from the sight of his cellmates’ careful ministrations. Tunes out the soft encouraging murmurs. Lets his mind wander. Away from the oppressive heat of Hong Kong, away from the blood-stained dampness of this jail cell. To a windswept port in Dover, a pair of piercing blue eyes looking back at him across the deck of the ship: nervous and hopeful and excited and… loving….
He latches on to the anchor of those eyes, drapes the memory of it over the weeping crack on his wildly stammering heart.
I will make you proud of me, Estella. I promise.
***
He doesn’t resist when the two guards return, striding with grim determination toward his corner of the cell. Steps out with his head held high, sparing but a moment of hesitation to glance up at the hole of a window that had carried to him the sounds of another’s earlier torture. Does his best not to stumble as they manhandle him roughly and swiftly through the winding hallways, forcing him to duck his head at the last moment to avoid banging it on the too-low ceiling. Takes care not to trip as they push him up a short flight of stairs and out into the sunlit courtyard, painfully bright after the oppressive gloom of his prison.
He raises his head higher, swallowing down his fear. Stands stiff and tall, letting his gaze sweep over his surroundings, over the blood-spattered stone column on a small pedestal in the center of the courtyard with the iron manacles hanging off a metal handle right at one’s eye level, over a burly, ruddy-faced soldier with a folded whip in his hand and a look of bored indifference in his eyes befitting an executioner, over Donaldson himself who’s watching him with that same smugly imperious, mocking expression he had on his face when he taunted him over that blasted article back at the governor’s mansion.
“She stitched you up like a kipper, Fogg.”
His lips twitch bitterly at the memory, and he glares back in open challenge. He knows what Donaldson thinks of him, knows he expects him to crumple and plea. And he won’t give him the satisfaction.
And so he wills his hands not to tremble as he removes his jacket, handing it blindly to one of the guards. Wills his voice not to break as he quips, dark and indignant, proudly professing his innocence one last time.
And feels a twinge of grim satisfaction at the look of puzzled doubt-filled indecision that flickers briefly on the police commissioner’s face.