Quinn was first back to the house after Jib’s service. The others stayed behind to have a meal with the family, to fulfill one of Jib’s last requests.
The hour was late, and I imagined he’d just been out walking, as he was prone to do when he needed more room to think than pacing his laboratory allowed.
I was in my bedroom, still staring out the window into the dark when I heard the knock. This time, he actually waited for me to answer.
When I saw the look upon his face, it took all my strength not to immediately take him into my arms. He needed to be held — I was certain of it — as much as I needed to hold him.
Seeing him this way, none of my questions about his past mattered any more; nothing but loving him mattered at all.
“I have a gift for you.” His voice broke as he spoke the words and finally entered the room. “From Jon.”
“Jon?” I asked, momentarily forgetting.
Quinn shrugged. “I never did call him Jib.”
My eyes filled again as I took the box and stared, unsure what to do.
“Open it,” he said. “Jon specified that no one was to wait to open them.”
I began to unwrap it and found inside a beautiful wooden music box.
“Try it,” Quinn instructed.
“No, I…”
“He would want you to.”
I shivered and turned the crank. A lovely song played, a waltz. The same waltz Jib had played on the piano the night I first met his beloved “Freak’s Chorus”.
Before I knew it, Quinn had removed his coat and approached me. Then, all at once, his arms were around me, and we were dancing.
Eventually the music box wound down, and so did the motion of our bodies as we swayed gently, side to side. It was as though, for a moment, he forgot about everything and everyone else in the world but me. It was the moment I had lived for, and I thanked Jib in my heart for this, the real gift.
Finally, he stopped still and stared so intensely, it was more through me than at me. There was a look of passion in his eyes, for an instant, so strong and true I could barely stand the sight of it. It burned in me and through me with a power I knew that I could not control.
I felt his breath against my cheek as I closed my eyes. He was so close now I reveled in the warmth of his body, and I wanted nothing more than to learn, at last, of all the things that I had until this point in my life only imagined in my darkest, secret dreams.
I forgot myself completely and leaned closer to him.
His hand brushed against my face; first my cheek, then down over my chin. Next his fingertips traced along the sloping line of my neck and I heard him sigh a certain way — a sound I had never in my life heard a man make — and that immediately led me to want to know what other sounds a man could make, if he finally gave free reign to his passion.
That was when I made the mistake of a lifetime.
As his hand boldly moved from my shoulder, closer to my heart, I couldn't stop myself from whispering to him — and in so doing, I deprived myself of what I was sure would come in the seconds to follow had I but been able to hold back; his lips upon mine, at last.
"Quinn." I breathed his name more than spoke it, and my heart raced to the point that I didn't know if it could stand the strain, but neither did I care. If he would kiss me, only once, I could close my eyes and die here, in his arms without a single regret but that I would never feel that kiss again.
The moment I spoke his name, his fingers met the cold metal of the pendant wired to my chest. He jumped. His eyes flew open and he backed away from me, fumbling for the door as his face betrayed emotions impossible to distinguish between hatred of me and hatred of himself.
"No," he insisted, grasping for the doorknob and missing. "No."
Tears formed in my eyes but did not fall. I again felt the shuddering of my heart as it fought the need to tick onward.
The look upon his face was a mixture of horror and disbelief at what he had come so close to doing. The pain in his beautiful blue eyes moved me to speak with strength and longing beyond any emotion I had ever known.
"Would it be such a horrible thing to discover that you were capable of feeling something, for someone, other than despair? Would it be so—”
"I can't." He stood taller and cleared his throat. All emotion disappeared behind the statue's face again. "I am your physician."
"Do you think I stay because you are my physician?" I asked, wondering how it was possible that after all this time, still, he did not see.
"You stay because my life depends upon it," he blurted, not even realizing what he'd said until it was too late to take it back.
My eyes lit up brighter than the Christmas star, and I stepped forward, closer to him once more. "Quinn..."
"You stay here because you know you will die without medical attention that only I can give to you," he corrected, but he knew it was too late: the words were hollow in our ears. "You stay because you want to live."
"I stay because you are why I live. What is there for me beyond the walls of this house — what's more, beyond the confines of your arms?" I trembled, and my hands vibrated as I grasped at the front of his shirt. "Now that I have felt them around me in that way, for even the shortest possible increment of time—"
"It will never happen again."
"Don't say that! Please don't say that."
He reached out to take hold of my arms but stopped short of actually touching me. My tears spilled down, and his hand moved as if to brush them aside, but again, he wouldn’t allow himself what would surely be at least the physical comfort of my skin against his, not even in that smallest possible way.
"I am your physician," he repeated.
"You gave me new life only to deny me the one that could ever truly matter," I cried, and he turned paler than he'd been before, by far.
"I have done all I can to give you everything. I would stop at nothing to keep you alive. Nothing! If I could, I would give you my heart."
"You speak literally, sir; but it is the figurative heart, the one which contains your emotions, that I need."
He stared at me in utter bewilderment. Could my feelings really still be such a surprise to him?
Had he truly never noticed the way that I looked at him, the way I would hang upon his every breath? The way that my eyes took on new light and my cheeks brighter color the moment he entered a room?
"You cannot give your heart to anyone," I whispered, far more bitterly than I had intended. "I would give up every day of the rest of my life in a single beat of this mechanical heart if you would only feel something more for me than pity."
"Pity?" He appeared disgusted by the thought. "Is that what you believe I feel for you? Pity?"
"Are you capable of feeling anything more, for anyone still breathing? Or will you always belong only to the empty memory of a woman who never even loved you?"
The expression upon his face was unlike any I had ever seen. Such pain, such consuming and unimaginable agony — and I was the one who had caused it.
I wanted to disappear — no — seeing it, I wanted to die.
"Quinn, I'm sorry!" I raised my arm and reached out desperately, trying to grasp hold of him, but he was already moving away.
He wrenched the key, tore the door open, and then slammed it behind him with a force that rattled the window with such power I feared the glass would shatter. I crumpled down onto the bed, shaken and wracked with sobs. I heard the sound of that wretched mechanical clicking speed up, and I longed to rip the engine which drove it from my very chest and what remained of my broken heart along with it.
I cared not whether I lived or died beyond that moment. There was no life left for me without him, and I couldn't imagine that after what I'd just said he'd ever be willing to speak to me again.
Still, I knew I must try.
I drew myself up, pressed open the panel in the wall, and rushed down to the laboratory.
#
He looked up in shock as he watched me enter the room by way of the hidden staircase.
“How did you…”
“I know, Quinn. I know, as you heard, everything. Everything but why.”
“Why?”
“Why do you keep Orchid here? Why can’t you let her rest?”
“I… I can’t… I don’t… ” he stammered. “You think it was my doing, keeping her like this all this time? What kind of monster do you take me for?”
“What kind of monster are you?” The words escaped my lips before I could stop them, and he reacted with the kind of uncharacteristic panic that can only accompany the fear of losing what you hold most dear.
“It was Schuyler! He wanted her to be preserved like that. He insists on keeping her here to torment me.”
I wanted to believe him, but Schuyler had been so convincing…
“You asked a question: why. Why is the question I have asked myself every day for so long; every damned day.” He moved toward me, trembling. “Why can’t I just let myself love her? Why can’t I let her love me?”
I stayed still, not wanting to break the spell.
“Would she hate me if she knew the truth, this Abigail Courage…”
I gasped, and he leaned closer to me, whispering in my ear.
“Yes, I have known for some time. Jon’s parents can be helpful.”
He reached out and finally touched my face again. “Abigail Courage, the dear little maid that the Argents sent to Hell without reason.”
I closed my eyes and felt his cheek pressed against mine.
“This girl called Elsewhere, because wherever she went, she seemed to belong somewhere different.” His voice dropped, and I felt his breath against my skin. I struggled to turn, to look at him, but I was far too weak with emotion in this moment to raise my eyelids again.
Just once, I wanted to look into those brilliant eyes I loved so well and find similar, if not equal, affection.
"She became a woman who frightened me, because she had within her the power to circumvent my defenses with nothing more than a single glance." He buried his face into my neck, and my hair became damp as he finally gave way to tears. "You frightened me, because I knew that to love you and lose you would destroy me."
I had no choice but to wonder, even now as he was speaking words that I had so longed to hear, if it was not still for Orchid he was weeping.
"I may have cheated both God and Death in my attempts to save you, but they were selfish intentions and both entities knew it. How I wish I could make this right. That I could return to that moment in time years ago when I lost my way. If I could, then perhaps the Fates would not be exacting such penance from me now. Maybe they..." He sobbed, clutching me to his chest as my breathing became ever more shallow. "Maybe they would let me keep you."
I wished that I could whisper to him that it was all right, that even if I could not have his love, I wouldn’t have wished away a moment of the time I had spent with him, or traded it for a lifetime of years in an empty, meaningless existence. Yet all I could say was this:
“I love you, Quinn Godspeed.”
His hands raced from my shoulders, gliding up my neck and finally onto my face.
“Abigail,” he gasped, his chest rising and falling rapidly with each breath. “My brave, precious Abigail.”
He took hold of me and kissed me. Slowly, fiercely, with all the pain and pleasure any such a touch could ever contain.
My arms enveloped him, and we clasped onto each other with strength beyond that either of us had ever possessed alone. I lost count of his kisses as he held me against his pounding heart, I only knew that no number of them could ever be enough for them to lose their power over me or quench the desperate need I had for more.
"Abigail." A bitter voice repeated the word, punctuating the man's fury with the slamming of the door. "At last I learn your name."
Quinn instantly drew my body away from his and swung me back, planting himself between Schuyler and I. "Stay where you are, sir."
"I took you in off the street, Abigail, saved you from dying like an abandoned dog in the rain, and this is how you repay me." Schuyler shrugged his coat from his shoulders and tossed it across the room. "This is how both of you repay me."
"Schuyler—" I began, but the sound of my voice only poured fuel upon his rage. He cried out in more than a growl but something less than a scream — a wail of passion and agony the likes of which I had never heard in my life, and dearly wished I never would again.
Without another word he flung himself at Quinn. Quinn's reflexes were fast, and I was spinning away, out of the way, before Schuyler's first blow made contact upon his skin.
"Abigail, go," Quinn directed.
"I won't leave you!" I began to look around for something, anything that I could use to intervene, to try to snap Schuyler back to his senses long enough for Quinn to subdue him. The man's strength had increased beyond that which seemed purely human; it was the power of one lashing out at life itself — the wrath of a man with absolutely nothing in the world left to lose or live for.
"Is love not of the heart, Quinn? Something beyond our mortal flesh?" Schuyler cried, furniture toppling to the side as he and Quinn struggled. "Shouldn't it be about two souls, well matched? Whose soul has ever been better matched to yours than mine!"
"Schuyler," Quinn roared, as the tea service and the table it stood upon crashed to the ground. "Stop!"
"Is there no room in your heart for the only person who has always stood by you, no matter the danger, no matter the sorrow? The only person who would never leave you?"
"Abigail, go!" Quinn shouted now as he grappled with Schuyler, the two upending one piece of equipment after another as they battled.
I seized a pitcher of water and tossed the contents onto them both but found it had no effect but to make Schuyler more violent.
He picked Quinn up and threw him back against the wall, at which point I screamed so loud footsteps charged, running in our direction from upstairs.
Quinn bounced off of the wall with his fists at the ready, and though his head had knocked back soundly upon the paneling, he managed to land several blows in quick succession upon Schuyler's face, bloodying him but not managing to truly daze him.
Schuyler countered quickly. He grasped hold of Quinn's shirt and dragged him across the desk, finally pinning him down upon it. The motion knocked Quinn's antique oil lamp to the floor and it shattered upon impact; with a fearsome, sickening roar, the books and stacks of papers beside the desk caught and burst into flame.
Without hesitation I ran toward them. Even as he tried to fend off Schuyler's continuing assault, Quinn managed to push me away. "Run!" he insisted, as I continuously pulled at the back of Schuyler's shirt, refusing to abandon him.
"Schuyler, NO!" I screamed. In that instant Penn rushed into the room. He muttered a prayer at the sight of the flames and the two men, friends for a lifetime, landing blow after blow upon each other's already battered bodies.
"Penn! Get them OUT!" Quinn choked out in desperation, as Schuyler's hands encircled his throat, seeking to stop all sound.
Penn did as he was told, grabbed me by the arms and pulled me toward the door. Smoke filled the room and I struggled against it, and him, as he dragged me back by force and away from the only person in the world I gave a damn about living for.
"Let me go! Penn, please!" I begged, but Penn refused. He picked me up and carried me now, kicking and fighting him though I was, toward the staircase.
"Stop! We have to get them out!" He knew it was too late, and the fire would mean the end of the building. He had been charged with the solemn duty to be sure that it did not mean the end for us all.
"The girls. Get them out. I am not leaving without him." I finally managed to claw my way free of his grasp. "I cannot — I will not — leave him."
He hesitated.
"Are we all to die tonight?" I shivered as the noise of the fire roared and breathed all around us now. "Go, Penn, please!"
Accepting that he could not expect me to do the impossible, Penn finally relented, and took off up the stairs the way that he had come.
I turned and ran as fast as I could go. Godspeed's clockwork heart pounded and ground away within me, at the very limits of its tolerance as I began to cough in the thick, black smoke.
The fire moved at blinding speed, devouring everything in its path as it progressed toward equipment that I knew was beyond merely combustible: it was so dangerous that if anyone remained in the building much longer they would be destroyed in the explosion along with it.
"All my life I have loved you, Quinn," Schuyler wailed, as he continued to drive his fists time and again into Quinn's beautiful face. "All my life I have taken care of you, longed for you, but you could not see. You would not see. Why was it so impossible for you to love me?" His entire body shook, his voice, faltering.
"Schuyler, you know I could not love any man in that way. It was never you, it's that I—"
"Don't say it!" Schuyler's words were as broken as his heart. "Orchid! Abigail! You loved them, but you could not accept the one who loved you most of all! For what? But for a few meaningless details of anatomy? Love is so much more than that!" His passion had full control of him now, and he had no idea just how much damage he was doing to the man he loved so much — or perhaps he did not care. Something in him had finally traversed the limits of reason. I tore at the back of his shirt once more, but he continued to ignore my presence, utterly. "I loved you, Quinn. God, how I loved you."
Quinn looked near to unconsciousness by this point, and I knew on all fronts our time was running out. In absolute desperation, I sought something heavy with which to finally stop the unrelenting advance of his attacker.
I spied a quartz bookend upon the edge of the table beside me and picked it up, charging upon the man without thought and landing it squarely against the back of his skull.
The sound it made as it injured him sickened me, and I wished I was a woman who prayed so I could ask whatever gods may be for their forgiveness for what I had just done.
Schuyler was knocked off balance, his knees buckled and he collapsed to the ground in a heap.
By this point, the fire had licked up the wall and begun to engulf the nearest section of ceiling. The creaking of beams and floor boards above us warned that soon they would come raining down, the detritus of all that Schuyler Algernon had spent his life building, intent on entombing us all.
Just as Quinn's head cleared enough to realize the blows had stopped, our eyes met, and held for the instant that it took for the blaze to do just as I'd feared.
Quinn propelled himself from the surface of the desk and grabbed me, knocking us both to the floor and out of the way of the falling beam. We heard a scream and realized that Schuyler had not been so fortunate; he was trapped now, pinned by both legs, beneath it.
"Quinn!" I pleaded with him, but I knew it was useless. He would never leave Schuyler here to die alone.
"Go, Abigail, please." His eyes held a desperation I had never seen. "Please." He staggered to his feet and began to try to free Schuyler from entrapment.
"Go!" Quinn shouted again, but this time he was not speaking to me.
Penn had returned, and was now quite prepared to drag me all the way out of the house in order to obey his master's command.
That was exactly what he did.
He pulled me into his arms, lifted me over his shoulder, and carried me out of the house by sheer strength of soul and will as I kept on screaming Quinn's name.