A Fiery Dalliance

XXXVIII

"Sometimes the hardest part of the journey is believing you're worthy of the trip." Glenn Beck, The Christmas Sweater

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XXXVIII.

Joe, and half a dozen others, were thrown into a cell that certainly was not fit for rats, let alone humans. The floor was cold and damp and smelled of defecation. The only light source was a pathetic, flickering lamp on the wall opposite the cell.

Despite it being summer, the night air was cold, and a draught blew in through the bars of the glassless window. What was already a miserable place had to have been a death trap of cold in winter.

There was no furniture in the cell. Only a moth-eaten blanket that looked as though it was infested with typhus. There was barely enough room to sit with the number of bodies in the cramped space. Being so close to these men, the well dressed, ordinarily superior gentlemen that they were, was harrowing. Joe could see the fear in their eyes. They were a mixture of ages, both young and old, but none deserving of the fate that they feared.

And all Joe could think about was that he was grateful that it was him here, and not Ed. He could not have born the thought of such a look of fear on his brother's face.

But a thought, many thoughts, of Perrie crept into his mind, and as much as Joe tried to block them, he could not. He thought of the watch that he had given to Ed to pass on, and how Perrie would be looking at it, and trying to make sense of the lock of hair that he had kept inside of it for so many years. Would she know that it was hers? Would she understand the meaning that he, himself, had not understood for the longest time?

Would Perrie understand any of this?

Joe felt his heartbeat in his throat as he gripped hold of the iron bars of the cell, which were rough with rust and grime beneath his palms. He was there for a reason.

Joe was in prison to save his brother. He was in prison to spare Ed. That was why ...

You deserve to suffer.

You deserve to be punished.

No good ever came from you.

You killed your mother.

You were cut from your mother's dead body.

Your mother died with you inside her.

You are deaf because you are worthless.

You hurt everyone you touch.

They are better off without you.

It was as though the Devil spoke to him. Joe could not shut it out. He wanted to scream. He wanted it to stop. He wanted it to go away. He wanted to think differently, and to know that it all was a lie.

Because what he truly wanted was out there. It had always been right there in the Beresford's home. He had seen it in Perrie the day he had met her. She had stormed her way into his life, and into his heart, like a ferocious blaze of fire, and as those flames licked at his open, festering wounds, and got too close, Joe instinctively put up a shield of iron to protect himself.

But what was he really doing?

Joe was not capable of protecting himself. He had monumentally failed, and he had allowed every moment of darkness that he had known in his life to consume him, and to dictate his worth.

Joe wanted to be saved.

He exhaled a staggered breath as he leaned his forehead against the bars for fear that he would collapse.