On the Coldest Winter Night

Chapter Four

"He's… a lot of blood… barely…."

"…. dangerous…. kill…."

"Brother? What's going on…?"

"…. a trap, Master!"

"…. believe you…. Can't trust him…."

"… my brother…"

My brother.

Brother.

The battle for consciousness was a fierce one, mostly because he was trying very, very hard to stay asleep. Even half submerged in the lulling comfort of oblivion, he was still alert to the amount of pain awaiting him were he to willingly swim up to the surface of awareness. He tried to hide his body into one of the moss-covered caverns of his childhood forest, burying his head into the soft wool of memories long past. Such small comforts long denied—he wanted to hang on to them, safely tucked away from the web of insanity that he had foolishly gotten himself caught in—and so when finally his hold on unconsciousness wavered, he was abruptly yanked from the calm serenity of happier times and thrown high above the warm surface into icy wakefulness, gasping and choking as he inhaled his first conscious breath of chilly late fall air.

"Easy, easy there." A warm, rich voice, male and wizened with time, rang out in alarm. He could not identify it. Through the slightly numbed haze of pain and the sweltering heat—so unseasonable, this heat—he could make out the feel of strong hands on his chest and shoulders gently pushing him down on the bed. The sickly smell of blood and medicine and something else permeated the room. His body felt stiff and restricted—probably gauzes, but he wasn't sure—he wouldn't put it past his captors to use ropes. His hair—a long, gray, tangled mess—seemed like the devil's snare plastering on his sticky forehead and trapping his chest, his arms. God, he was going to cut all of it off the next time he gets his hand on a pair of scissors, or even a scalpel.

He dared to open his eyes only to squeeze them shut again, sending an intense wave of pain through his head—the room, though dimly lit, burned his dry corneas like hot sand—and instead concentrated on not crying out in pain as his lungs and ribs threatened to explode with each draw of breath. "There, that's it, breathe slowly, my boy." That voice again. "I should have given you more morphine to dull the pain, but the Earl objected," the old man sighed, and Jizabel's body turned rigid in his hands.

Why was he here? He had no doubt to whom the old man was referring—there was only one possible Earl that he would ever come into contact with. It was hard to breathe and even harder to think, and he struggled to wrap his mind around his current situation. Cain. This was the Hargreaves' mansion; he could recognize the half-familiar, half-forgotten scent of the place—it was something in the cleaning products that the maids used, no doubt, and in the laundry, too, for he has come to associate the slightly sweet, slightly musky smell with his brother. He took a deep breath, taking with him the scent from the sheets around, and felt his throat burning in protest. "Water," he croaked, a crinkling sound of dried leaves scraping against cracked pavement, and immediately a cool glass was pressed against his lips, and a hand slowly lifted his head from its nest of pillow. He drank, or rather choked down the water, though he couldn't deny that he felt immeasurably better as the much-needed moisture soothed the gritty dryness in his throat.

Satiated, he let his head loll back, and the supporting hand lowered him back down. Even the simple act of drinking water was a test of willpower; he grimaced, feeling the bit of strength he regained from the water seeping quickly away as his nerves stretched to their very limit, and his effort to stifle moans of pain seemed to grow more futile as the pinpricks of pain started to feel suspiciously like daggers stabbing at every exposed inch of his skin. The old man assisting him seemed agitated; Jizabel could hear his steps around the room and the tinkering of silverwares and glass.

His mind reeled with questions. How did he end up here? He would have questioned the fact even more had his body not convulsed in pathetic shudders every few seconds, a weakness no doubt brought on by the unbearable, oppressive heat. The man must have taken pity on him because he felt a sharp sting on his arm followed by sweet, blissful numbness spreading all over his body. His pain was still there, but he was strangely detached from it all, and it was someone else's pain: he just happened to be aware of it. Slowly, his lashes fluttered open, and he finally took in the room now that everything seemed to take on a most promising haze of nothingness.

He made a soft, surprised sound as his eyes roamed over the sage green wallpaper littered with dusty pink roses, offset by the lightly varnished maple furniture with the faintest outlines of angel wings appliques—how pretty, and a girl's room, by the look of it, and his suspicion was confirmed as he trailed a shaking finger over the muted butter yellow of his quilted coverlet. He had always hated yellow. No, that wasn't right. He loved yellow. Yellow was like the sun, like warmth and love and summer daffodils. Except he hated daffodils, but no, that wasn't it either. There was only one type of flower that he hated, and he was almost sure that it wasn't daffodil. God, how his head hurt.

A hand on his shoulder, poised to shake him awake. He wanted so much to resist, to scream out to the old man to leave him alone—how he itched for his scalpel! —but the movement jerked to a stop. He felt like he was missing some terribly important exchange of information, and there was definitely someone else in the room, he could feel it, but already his eyes were slipping shut, and the only coherent thought that remained before he slipped off into unconsciousness was that the heat, however stifling and exhausting, was infinitely preferable to the bone-chilling cold of his solitude.

He woke again to the same humid, sticky swelter of his fever, only this time there was a cool, though rapidly warming cloth on his damp forehead. The morphine had worn off again, but it was somehow better like this—he didn't like the numbness, the weightlessness that the drug gave him. He'd experienced worse, in any case, if not physically. Cassandra might have been well-endowed and cruel, but the deed was done; he was forever stained by sin, just like he always had been—this time, it was just a different kind of sin, the kind that father would never forgive him for. Alexis would never be able to absolve his wayward son of this, not even with a thousand cleansing strikes.

His hands unwittingly clenched at the thought. How could he ever face his father again after what that despicable monster did to him? The damage to his body was minimal—after the initial invasion, the subsequent ones had ceased to hurt so much. The Head Priest was kind enough to prepare him, however wicked his intentions were. Jizabel suffered no more than the numerous bruises scattered over his shoulders and arms from Cassandra's grip, the welts on his chest and back from the man's sorry imitations of his father's loving strokes, and the inexplicable stabs of pain from his hands and feet—puncture wounds, most likely, though he wasn't brave enough to open his eyes and see to them yet.

And it wasn't really about power. He had long disillusioned himself on that account. He knew that he had never wielded any amount of power in his twenty-six years in this world, from his sheltered childhood to his adult years. It was always there, an undeniable fact, as undeniable as the sky was blue and the grass was green. And father would always be able to control him, and there was nothing wrong with that. How should he survive without father, he, a stupid, hideous, useless sinner, born wallowing in sins as thick as the dark, Londonian industrial slime that he'd so hated?

No, the injuries would heal someday, and it wasn't just the act of submission that plagued him so. That demon Cassandra could take his tainted body—there was no way he could sully it anymore than it already was. His heart gave a sudden alarming throb. He had submitted to Cassandra, like he did so many times before, giving in to the older man's none too subtle advances, but never before had he enjoyed himself even just the tiniest bit. Something inside him broke at the precise moment he fully gave himself over to the Head Priest, body and soul, even for just the once. His body had betrayed him—the body that father was so kind to give him, so kind to repair when it threatened to fail him all those years ago, and that same body had arched his back at Lord Gladstone's coax; that same body had moaned in pleasure, pleasure! at the most vile of sins, and what other than that body had reached its own release in tandem with that of his violator. He was terrified; he was but a prisoner trapped in his own deranged mind, helpless to watch as he betrayed his own self over and over, as the shroud of shame slipped over his head like an iron cloth. Father had always told him that a sinner, if he were repentant, would be forgiven, though with a price, but how could he possibly be forgiven if he had enjoyed it so? And God, he didn't even care what God thought of him—if God had forsaken him, then he could also forsake God—but the very thought of hurting father with his own wickedness sent stabs of pain to his chest. Father was always so wounded after every absolution, that Jizabel had learned to retreat to somewhere far away so he wouldn't have to bear father's pain as the leather strokes blossomed on his back.

He could never go back, never again face father for what he had done. He couldn't even feel anger at Riff for being the reason for his falling out of father's favors, nor could he muster up the energy to detest Cassandra for violating all of him. He only had himself to blame: his own weakness, a weak, pathetic soul to accompany his broken, tainted body.

What had he to live for anymore? For a while, defeating Cain was his purpose in life, though he cared not for his brother's wellbeing—it was only ever a ploy to gain his father's attention, but now…. There was only that extra step, that final stretch of sin and he would be free from his own disgusting self; one more despicable act and he could finally atone for all of his sins for all eternity. The thought almost gave him comfort.

The only person that might miss him would be Cassian, and even of that he wasn't sure.

Her big brother had refused to let her enter the room, let alone tend for the injured doctor, despite her heartfelt pleas ("But he's my brother, too!") and big watery eyes. Cain had even gone as far as to lock the door to the guest room that Jizabel was using in hopes of deterring her, but oh, Maryweather was crafty enough. It was a simple matter of waiting until Cain had forgotten all about their conversation—four days, she counted—and waking up before the rest of the household to convince Dr. Tyrell that he should leave the door unlocked, and how could the old man resist the young lady in a light pink dress, lacy aprons covering her little torso and a pure white bonnet on her golden head, arms wrapped around a silver basin of ice? A small victory on her part, she thought, until she actually stepped foot into the room.

It wasn't the room itself that spooked her. She'd been in there countless times before, for it was a room usually reserved for the rare playmates that managed to stay the night without leaving in a huff at her horrid lower-class manners—though those, too, never came back for a second play date. She'd ceased to become upset when that happened. She had her brother, and Riff, and stern Aunt Katrina and Uncle Neil who'd visited her from time to time, and for her, that was enough. She never much liked snooty, highborn girls anyway.

But the room. It reeked of death and disease and damp, dreary darkness, and the normally sunny wallpaper seemed just a touch more ominous in the lone light of the dusty oil lamp on the faded green nightstand. The oil light, encased in green glass on an intricate bronze stand, did nothing to flatter her brother, she realized, as she gazed upon his face, tinted with the sickly pallor of almost-death, and a shiver ran through her. She decided to blame it on the chilly autumn wind sneaking through the half-opened windows and hurried over to close the shutters, stopping by the nightstand to place her basin of melting ice precariously close to the edge.

The noises of the night gave way to thick silence, and she drew the creamy, heavy curtains shut for good measures; the garden, while beautiful during the day, was home to dark, scary things at night, she knew, and instinctively inched closer to the figure lying supine on the bed. She briefly considered bringing the rocking chair from across the room over, but it was heavy and she was ten and surely the noise would wake brother Cain, so she carefully plopped down on the edge of the bed, so close to the sleeping man that she could feel the heat radiating off of his bandaged hand.

Her brother. She supposed she must feel affection toward him, and love, like how she loved Cain, but all she knew was a deep-rooted sort of fear, a sprinkling of disgust, and perhaps an ounce of pity. She knew Jizabel never cared one whit about her, indeed never even paid any attention to her outside of using her as a weapon against Cain, and it made no sense at all that she was even in his room, against Cain's orders no less, instead of safe in her frilly suite in the opposite wing of the house where she could pretend everything was the same as it always was, and her insane, estranged half-brother had not shown up at their doors with enough injuries to fill an entire ward of St. Thomas'.

And yet there she was, dipping the white washcloth into the melting ice and hissing at the cold, and her chubby, rose fingers gingerly pressed the cloth against the doctor's burning forehead. She could almost hear the cloth sizzle and burn because dear God, Jizabel was sick, and for the first time she wasn't talking about his morality.

He was vile, and evil beyond words, and without a working conscience, but he was still her brother, even if he would never even acknowledge her. And he could change, couldn't he? Surely he was only evil because of Father's influences. If he were to spend more time with Cain and her, wouldn't he turn out to be more like them, to be nice and good and wholesome? And she would gain another beloved brother, and Cain would lose another enemy, she thought as she gazed wistfully at his pallid face, still completely tense and closed off even in sleep. Not that she had ever had a chance to truly look at him without fear and distrust before—and she wasn't sure if she could even trust him now, unconscious as he was.

But she supposed she just wanted to see him in person, see his broken, twisted body, and she expected to feel some sort of grim satisfaction for his misfortune—there was a German word for that, schauden something, but it wasn't a word proper for a lady and Cain had told her to put it out of her mind, so she did—but she felt no joy, only a deep, drowning sort of sadness and pity. Maybe that was why she still stayed even though her curiosity had long been sated; maybe her blood recognized its kin, and so she stayed.

He was truly beautiful, even in this state, and she shuddered to think of what lied beneath his angelic face. His skin was a pale mask of porcelain with that same delicate consistency, and the blue-black bruises and red-red cuts startled her because she half-expected him to crumble and crack instead.

The lamplight casted green shadows on his cheeks, sculpting eerie wonders out of the sharp angles of his nose and high, high cheekbones, and his pale lips, full and wide and should be too large for his face but somehow just the right size and shape. She could see the tiny, taut lines at the corner of his eyes, not from a lifetime of happiness and mirth but those borne of worry and anxiety and pain, and they seemed so out of place next to his long, slightly curled lashes, a pale blond-gray just a shade darker than his hair. And his hair, a wondrous tumble of condensed ashes, now clean and free of blood and grime—the maids had seen to it earlier, the fearful, tittering, giggling lot, though she liked them so well—was breathtaking to behold, and she unthinkingly reached out a hand and let a lock of hair, cool as silver and soft as winter's breath, slip through her fingers. He was like a fairytale princess, she thought, or some mythical creature twice as beautiful because he truly didn't look real, and a sudden chill went through her at the thought of sitting so close to something so inhuman, so inhumane.

But the doctor chose that precise moment to lazily flash open his eyes, and she almost drowned inside those blue iris eyes—she knew this because she loved blue irises, because they were her favorite flowers, but she was almost sure she never wanted to see another blue iris again so long as she lived.

"Br-… D-Doctor Disraeli," she stammered, correcting herself halfway through. "I- ah, you're up," she finished lamely and snatched back her hand as if the ashes of his hair had heated up to burning embers.

He moved slowly, sluggishly, like he was swimming in a vat of honey, and she felt the fear ebbing out of her as he painfully dragged a bandaged hand up to his temple, fingers shaking and weak as he attempted to push the silver strands out of his face. Her brother only gazed at her half-curiously at first, as if he couldn't figure out what he was looking at, but he gradually found awareness. His gaze hardened, and she wanted to run, but her Hargreaves pride wouldn't let her.

"Your fever's getting better. I'm sure you can't possibly burn up any more than this, so it should break soon, and I've been changing your compress so that you would feel better…." She babbled on, calming herself with her own words and a halfhearted smile, and cooled the washcloth again as if to prove to him that she wasn't afraid of him.

She could barely suppress a shriek as his hand found her wrist, the lethargy gone: his grip was vice-like around her chubby childish wrist, the skin crushed beneath his gauzed fingers gone an alarming shade of white. But she held her ground and stared at him as if she were his equal, and her cornflower eyes met his challengingly, until he wetly rasped a chuckle and released her wrist, all the energy gone out of him as he seemed to deflate before her very eyes.

"I remember you," he said, his words rough and altogether unlike the smooth velvet that she remembered. "Cain's bastard sister."

She didn't like the way she existed in his mind as a mere afterthought, a nameless being whose existence was only memorable because of her brother, though she could detect no malice in his words—he was a bastard too, and he knew it, and she remained silent and fixed him with a glare. He seemed amused, for some strange reason, and broke into harsh-sounding chuckles that turned into wracking coughs. Her hand immediately found the pitcher of water on the table and poured him a half-glass, and his amusement was all gone and he became all quivering breaths and trembling hands.

But she wasn't his maid, so she calmly held out the glass until he had regained some semblance of control over his body and took the water from her with both hands, still shaking, and succeeded in bringing it to his mouth with only mild spillage. He handed it back to her wordlessly, the fog in his eyes clearing away, and all of a sudden she had trouble breathing again as she stared into his deep, almost dead eyes.

She almost missed the quiet "Thank you" that passed his lips as a mere breath.

Well, he was never much for verbal malice, preferring to show his cruelty through his actions, and she was ever grateful that he was too weak to move. She could even manage a smile now, and she beamed at him and clutched at the cool glass like a present from her older brother. "We've been worried. Cain and I. You, ah, we found you at the gates, and you were bleeding, and we thought you were-"

"So I figured," he cut in, voice soft and resigned with exhaustion. "And Cain, the magnificent Earl Hargreaves, decided that he should take pity on a twice-scorned murderer. How typical." The curve of his smile was brittle and sharp like the scalpels that she had often seen on his person. "Though I am surprised that he should trust me so much as to leave his beloved sister alone with me." A pause, laden with the sounds of thoughts racing. "Or should I be insulted that he thinks me so weak, so helpless as to pose no threat to you?"

He was in pain, and she could see it in the rigid lines of his shoulders and the set of his jaw. There was no point in antagonizing him. "Brother forbade me from coming here," she admitted, "I sneaked in."

"Why?"

"I-…." And why, indeed. Jizabel would never understand her reasoning. He did not see her as kin, would never see her as kin. Let him think it was pity and childish concern that lit her path.

"You were hurt. I just wanted to make sure you were okay." That was safe, not quite a lie but not the whole truth, and she was proud of the steadiness of her voice. "There was so much blood, and Dr. Tyrell said that your fever was really high, so I was a little worried…." She trailed off, looking uncertain, and she made a vague gesture with her head toward the now-tepid basin. "It always made me feel better when I got sick. And it's not nice to be alone."

His eyes gleamed in the pale light of dawn, cold and emotionless as stones. I've spent hours here, she realized, suddenly struck by how tired, how sleepy she was.

"Come here. Closer, child. I wish to see your face more clearly."

Would she dare? He had been civil to her thus far and had made no move against her, not to mention his mutilated hands—pierced straight through the palms with iron nails, how the sight had sickened her—but would she, should she, trust him that much?

Her hesitation must have shown because he quietly chuckled, melting back into the mattress like candle wax. "So you do have some sense left in you, after all. Very well." He closed his eyes, a slight grimace taking over his features, and for that single moment she wished she could take away all of his pain. "You should leave before your brother finds you here."

She numbly nodded and gathered up her little basin, and as she made her way to the door, she couldn't help but blurt out, "Maryweather."

"What?"

"My name. Maryweather."

"Thank you, Miss Maryweather." He sounded wry, amused. "Though I've never forgotten it."

She blushed and fled the room, the echoes of his unheard laughter reverberating in her head.

A/N: Guh, I am SO SORRY for this extremely late update. I'm currently halfway around the world on vacation with my family, mostly traveling and staying at each city for a few days at a time, so not a lot of time for writing. Thank you SO MUCH, reviewers! You are the motivation to keep me going with this story! (Special thanks to Kare Uta and Syri-LLC for kicking my ass into gears since I am absolutely horrible at kicking myself OTL)