Sat, May 19 2012
| TITLE: | What Did You Just Do and What the Hell Were You Thinking? |
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| AUTHOR: | Sherry Thornburg |
| CATEGORY/TYPE: | Adventure |
| RATING/WARNINGS: | G, Gen |
| MAIN CHARACTERS: | The cast of SAJV. |
| DESCRIPTION: | |
| STATUS: | Complete |
| AUTHOR'S NOTES: | The Valley of the Shadow (An angel story), Written as a missing scene from the end of the The Cardinal's Revenge |
“WHAT DID YOU JUST DO AND WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING!”
Phileas’ mind cried out to him as his hands shook with repressed terror at what had just transpired. Cavois had just stood to leave and Passepartout was still on the other side of the entrance to this small room, likely wondering if his master were still alive. Phileas had known when his valet had left the room, but at the time he had been in a steely calm. The feeling had fit him like a second skin. He had lived with it for years. It came on him when the danger to his person or those he was to protect was at it’s highest. It gave him a detachment that allowed him a sharp concentration, which discounted any harm, ignored overwhelming odds, and in essence allowed him to behave like a stone cold bastard.
‘This time, however, you used that steely calm to play death games,’ he accused himself. ‘This time, you did not simply met the enemy; you joined the assassin in his madness and proved yourself the more demented. Cavois, at least, had found some lingering sense of self-preservation and had used it to save himself. But you Phileas Fogg . . ? You had to one up the man. You picked up the gun after your opponent had accepted his defeat and had held it to your own head firing away until you heard the weapon find the chamber with its single bullet. Then you turned the gun on your opponent and . . .”
Phileas stopped his litany of mortal transgressions at that point, acknowledging that he had in the end regained a semblance of sanity in this episode of psychotic perversity. Fogg could kill and had killed, but he was not a murderer. He had emptied the weapon of its one bullet just over the man’s right shoulder, only inches from his head.
The professional assassin had not been ready to die, not at all. When Fogg had pointed the gun at Cavois, he had been afraid. When the bullet had left the gun, Phileas could see that Cavois had no expectations of still being alive when the sound of its firing died away. He had, seconds later, opened those eyes again from their tightly clinched terror, shaking all over in the realization that he had life still. Cavois had then taken another ten seconds to accept what had truly happened before standing up and accepting his defeat. He was alive, but a dead man nonetheless, and would be expected to conduct himself as one. Silently, Cavois had lowered his defeated eyes from Phileas’ steely calm ones to acknowledge that fact. Once done, he had left the room with his second trailing behind him.
“It is over,” something/someone said in Phileas’ mind. It was a near audible voice soft and soothing spoken in a whisper. “Rebecca will be safe now. Cavois will never menace her or you again.”
Phileas heard the voice and knew there was no one in the room with him. He looked about anyway. Then he began to shake from the terror of what he had just gone through, and a very real fear for his sanity. No sane man would have done what he had just done. Sane men did not hear voices in empty rooms either.
‘Its finally happened,’ Phileas thought with growing panic; he had cleared the edge of the abyss that led to madness completely. His body’s quaking soon became uncontrollable. Fogg turned in his seat and silently called out to a god he had only given a nodding acquaintance to in recent years. His eyes closed tight and his shaking hands came together at the fingertips.
For an instant, time stopped. The darkness he had fled to with eyes closed was replaced with a blinding brightness. He stood in the middle of that brightness in the presence of the owner of the voice he had heard in his head a moment before. It was a man/presence… angel? Phileas couldn’t for the life of him identify the being before him. It was fierce and frightening and glorious all at the same time. It carried with it a strength that sent the mere mortal Phileas Fogg to his knees before it. He had no clear vision of its appearance, only an impression of overwhelming strength. His mind extrapolated a familiar approximation, a man in robes and armor carrying a shield and sword. A very big man, one that made him feel like a child looking up at a giant. But the ferocity in this being was not menacing, it was triumphant… jubilant, and the effect of feeling this creatures presence staggered him.
Phileas’ terrified mind changed its assessment of this creature. ‘This was no angel of God but of Satan; it was a demon from hell!’ It was the one that drove him to fits of suicidal insanity such as this, and was now celebrating its total triumph over him.
He was lost!
“Oh, God help me!”
As Fogg struggled in a fit of panic, the creature before him took notice and addressed him again in a rich deep masculine voice full of fraternal comfort. “Fear not old chap. God is still with you and you are not in the clutches of a demon. The demon was in the other fellow and we defeated them! Good show old boy!”
The very English accent and turn of phrase the voice used took Phileas so by surprise he lost his fear and stared at the creature before him in shock. Then even that cleared away as a feeling of warm comfort washed over him.
“Yes, Phileas Fogg. I am an angel, your guardian angel. And I was here for you and with you through it all.”
“You don’t feel like an angel,” Fogg said before he could break off the thought for fear of offending the creature. He needn’t have worried. The angel laughed deep and joyously.
“I’m not that kind of angel,” it said chuckling. “Those angels watch over less troublesome souls. For one such as you, sterner stuff is required. And you keep me right busy sometimes.”
Phileas could well believe that, even if he had not considered the existence of guardian angels in years. A long forgotten verse of scripture came back to him from somewhere in his early religious education. ‘Somewhere in Mathew was it?’
“The tenth verse of the eighteenth chapter of Mathew,” the angel supplied for him. “A good verse to keep in mind.”
“You are a right lucky mortal Phileas Fogg,” the angel continued. “If you had not been so grounded in God’s grace early on, you would have damned yourself good these last few years. But God looks kindly on those that would lay down their lives for others, and you know enough to be penitent and pull away short of falling into perdition. I didn’t make you not murder that evil fellow Phileas Fogg. You did that yourself. You did right good, old boy. Now go from this place. Your man is waiting for you, and remember, God is always with you, even in times such as these.”
With those words of bone deep soothing comfort, time reasserted itself and Phileas Fogg found himself back in his shaking body with his eyes shut tight, his trembling hands held together at the fingertips. He clenched his hands into fists in an attempt go get hold of himself and then looked up into Passepartout’s face. He had not committed suicide here tonight, nor had he committed murder. He had come in the name of protecting his Rebecca’s life and had succeeded. ‘God forgive me the means.’
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