Chapter Text
The Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher was sitting alone in her elegant parlour. The beautiful surroundings had often brought her a sense of peace, but it was not to be so today. She was lost in her thoughts, disconsolate. She was thinking of the man she had loved and lost.
He had been kind, and he had been brave, and yes, he had been foolish. He had held himself apart, but he had also risked his very heart. She had spent time with many attractive men before him, but his face was the one she finally turned to, his eyes were the ones that saw her and knew her for who she was.
He cared about what was right. He cared about her rights. He sometimes allowed what was right to supersede the law, of which he claimed to be a servant and not its master. He was possessed of a philosophical bent and a love for Shakespeare. The Police Academy was his only opportunity to further his education, but his life was spent in study.
And oh, how rare: he had loved her intelligence.
Phryne sighed. She had never met his equal.
There had been so many adventures together. So much excitement, so many near misses. So many risks, so many close calls. So many times she had wondered how they could come out on the other side. Sometimes, it seemed they would not. Yet they always had…until the day came when they ran up against a situation they could not find their way through together.
She had railed against it. She wasn’t ready to let their relationship come to an end. She could not give in, she wouldn’t! She could not bear to let this thing separate them.
He, on the other hand, had moved on with sad acceptance. He fought it as long as he could, but there came a day when the fight was too much for him. He didn’t want to leave, but realized that there was a point beyond which it was not possible for him to stay.
Phryne had raged, how she had raged! But in the end, there was no point. It could not be undone. She would have to find her way without him, but after so many years, she had lost the knack.
Now she was alone, and alone with her thoughts.
This kind of misery always led her to seek solace at the cemetery. She stood at Janey’s grave and stared, lost in thought, for a long time. She had lost her sister far too soon, far too young, and yet at last she had found her and restored her to a proper burial. It was something Phryne had made to come right, at last, so long ago.
She had been careless about religion for most of her life, not being able to reconcile an angry, jealous God with anything she wanted any part of: but in these later years, Phryne yearned for the thought of more than just this brief existence. Dot’s certainty that she and Hugh would live and love eternally was quite appealing. Phryne had begun to hope that there might be a way to see once more the ones she had loved.
She moved on, to the grave just on the other side. The headstone was large. It was odd, she thought, to see her own name on a gravestone, but there it was. She had known when she set it up that this was what she wanted, what she would always want. And before long, someone would come along and complete the etching, which would fill in the year of her death.
Just as she had done for him.
She ran her hand over the etched letters. His name, beside hers. For once bowing to societal pressure, she agreed that it should be his given name, though she had never once used it. How many years had passed, now. And she still went on, although at first she had never believed she could.
If there was any justice—she smiled to herself: how he had sought justice—if there was any justice, perhaps, somehow, she and he could be together again, somewhere.
She was ready for it to be over. So many others were gone… First she had lost Aunt Prudence, and then Mr. Butler. Mac, no longer popping by for a drink and a laugh. Cec, in that terrible accident. So many other friends, from so many other places. But the light had gone out when Jack died, and Phryne was ready for her end to come, as well.
She longed to rejoin the man she had loved and lost.