A/N: Guess who's back! Everyone's favorite Gypsy Clopin and his rather sharp tongued girlfriend Asperity! Finally. So here is the first chapter of the continuation of Asperity's life, 6 years after she and Clopin finally kissed and admitted that they loved each other.

Please review, for I dearly love reviews, and let me know if this is something that you enjoy. And to all my previous readers of the original Asperity, I do hope that I haven't let you down.

Love,

BRTxoxo

Chapter 1: Mawwage

When Esmeralda had told me that she and Sun God were getting married, I couldn't have been happier for her. Clopin gave her away, and performed the ceremony at the Court of Miracles.

It wasn't that I was against marriage. I mean I stood up there with my sister and her new husband and everything. I helped her dress and helped plan it and make food and everything that comes with having a wedding and what-not. So no, I wasn't against marriage at all. I understood why people wanted to get married and all that came with a marriage.

What I didn't understand was why Clopin thought it was a great idea that we should get married. I mean, we were already together. We knew we loved each other, everyone else knew we loved each other-hell, half the country of France had to have known that we were as good as married anyway.

But he kept bringing the idea up. It had been six years since Frollo had died and since that day, the people of Paris were much more accepting of the gypsies than they had been. Our relationship was a healthy one, and everything was fine.

So why did he keep bringing up the idea of marriage and why did it bother me so much?

Unfortunately, this week, our relationship was not healthy and everything was not fine. At all. I had hardly spoken to him, even when we went to bed together. We hadn't been intimate in so long, and to be quite honest, I was getting extremely frustrated.

Of course I couldn't exactly talk to my sister or my brother about this, especially not now that everyone was getting ready for Le Jour d'Amour, the Festival of Love. Not only that, Esmeralda and Sun God had a child-a boy. His name was Zephyr and everyone absolutely adored him. I had been there when Es had given birth and helped her raise him. Strangely enough over the past six years, given Clopin and my relationship, I had never been pregnant.

As far as anyone else other than me was concerned anyway.

The Festival wasn't for another week or two, but already people were starting to prepare, talking about their proclamations of love under the bell La Fidèle. Over the years, Clopin and I had eased into making such public declarations-while he was a main contributor to the Festival, he'd never participated much past providing entertainment to the children who thought that their parents were gross for standing in front of the entire town and kissing.

We had only started joining those couples after two years of being in a relationship-and for some reason it seemed as though most of the Gypsy community enjoyed our display of affection over anyone else.

It drove me mad.

So, while every other living human within a 50 kilometer radius of the streets of Paris was eagerly awaiting the first day of the Festival, I was dreading it and loathing its existence.

Clopin on the other hand, would talk of nothing else. If I was within earshot of his conversation with anyone, he would raise his voice and talk about that damn bell and that damned festival and how bloody wonderful it would be to proclaim his love to his dear wife.

I had been avoiding him completely. I stayed with Esmeralda or Quasimodo, and if I saw him in the streets, I would walk the other direction.

If he wanted to fight like this, fine. Two could play at that game and I was the best. It had happened before with my father after he escaped from the Palace of Justice. He had refused to acknowledge my friendship with Clopin-he almost refused to acknowledge the existence of Clopin himself. So I refused to acknowledge him. He had been furious. But even then Clopin was dear to me, and I wouldn't allow him to ignore the man that had taken me in, so he finally (begrudgingly) gave his consent for me to spend time with the gypsy in question.

But he would not pay him any kindness. Not until the later years and I was suspicious of why my father had so suddenly begun to treat him with respect. Of course it all made sense when I found out that Clopin was the Gypsy King, but he had since given up the title and passed it on to another.

Clopin knew how stubborn I could be. I knew how to get under his skin and frustrate him.

So this was the game we had played for at least two weeks.

The past few days, he was getting worse. He spoke louder. He made direct eye contact with me and he would wink. The last time we had supper together with Esmeralda and Sun God, he kept grinning at me and biting his lip when no one else was looking. He sent me looks full of longing and desire. In passing, he would grab my buttocks.

He was causing me so much sexual frustration that I had to avoid him. While I had been a worthy adversary of my father's anger and Clopin's from time to time years ago, this was a whole new battle field and I had no idea how to fight back.

And it was all because he had proposed.

. . .

"He." I punched a wooden beam. "Is such." I punched it again. "A bloody… little… git." I punched the beam repeatedly, breaking the skin on my knuckles. I could feel the slivers of wood sinking deeper into my skin.

Laverne sat and watched me in silence. She wasn't happy that was refusing to punch a pillow kept hurting myself but she kept herself from scolding me anymore.

After a few more hits, I let out a long, loud groan of frustration and sat against the beam. My hands were bloody and raw but I didn't care. "He won't talk to me, he won't look at me with anything but seduction and… and… and teasing and he won't even listen to me!"

The gargoyle seemed to raise an eyebrow at me. "Who are we talking about now?"

"Clopin!" I pushed myself off the floor and started pacing. "He acts all angry and hurt and upset for weeks and then he just stops and started getting all passive aggressive and then he starts getting flirty and seductive and he knows how much its affecting me and annoying me and getting to me and he keeps doing it and it's driving me up the bloody wall!"

"And what is it that you are angry at each other for?"

"He proposed to me," I growled.

"And you are angry about this."

"Why do we need to get married?! It's just a damn title, it's not like we'd be doing anything different than what we've been doing for the past six years! We'd just had a bloody title!" I kicked the beam this time, which was a huge mistake. I swore profusely, and then proceeded to punch the beam again. My hand started bleeding again.

Laverne watched me, her stone arms crossed. She definitely raised an eyebrow this time, but she waited for me to get my frustration out before speaking again.

The pain finally became too much for me and I pounded on the beam weakly with the side of my fists. I sank to the ground in tears-half from the pain in my hands, half from the pain of not talking to Clopin or even being able to smile at him.

Seeing me give in to the pain, Laverne hopped to the table in Quasimodo's room, got the basin and pitcher of water, and a piece of clean linen that she tore into strips. She didn't say anything as she poured some of the water into the basin and then dipped one of the linen strips into it. Her cool stone hands took hold of mine and started to clean them, gently dabbing the blood away from the broken skin. "Why does the thought of marriage bother you so?"

"The thought of marriage doesn't bother me at all. It's the thought of me being married that bothers me."

She again asked why it bothered me, her voice quiet and unemotional, like she was a diplomat.

"Because it does! I don't see why we have to get married. It seems stupid. It's just a title, all we do is have someone say 'okay, you're married now, you belong to each other, you can't have anyone else and you can't leave each other.' It's pointless. We would have lived out our life together that way anyway without someone telling us that's how we had to live. Ouch!"

Laverne had wiped at my knuckles too hard.

"I just… I don't care about getting married; I just care about spending the rest of my life with him. We don't need someone to tell us that we're together or a title to tell everyone else, it's stupid." I swallowed the lump in my throat that made it hard to talk. "I just… I miss him. We haven't really spoken to one another in a few weeks and we haven't even been sharing the same bed." I took my still dirty hand and wiped the tears irritably from my face. I was thirty four years old, crying about a fight with my lover. Like a child.

"Then why don't you make up with him? Go to him and apologize-"

"I am not apologizing," I said stubbornly.

She calmly resumed wrapping my hand in a clean strip of linen and proceeded to clean my other hand.

"It wasn't even my fault!"

*Flashback*

It was early morning. Clopin and I were snuggled closely together, my head on his shoulder, the blankets twisted around our legs. His hands drew lazy circles around my arm and waist.

He gently kissed my head and I smiled.

"Je t'aime," I sighed.

"Je t'aime aussi, mon amour."

"What are you thinking about?"

"I am thinking about how lovely our wedding ceremony would be," he replied, a small smile in his voice.

Immediately my eyes snapped open and my body froze. "A wedding ceremony?"

"Oui."

I swallowed hard and pushed out of his hold, my hair falling around my face. "Our wedding ceremony?"

He smiled at me and sat up as well, his left hand moving to trail along my arm. "Yes." He kissed me softly. "I've been thinking about it for quite some time now. Will you marry me, mon amour?"

"Why?"

Clopin pulled away from me, confusion draped over his face like a veil covering his disappointment. That was obviously not the answer he was looking for. "What do you mean, why? Wouldn't you like to be married?"

"But… why? Nothing would change, we'd be doing the exact same thing that we have been doing. I don't think it's really that important… I mean… it's really just someone telling us that we're in a relationship. We don't need someone to tell us what we are."

He frowned at me, his dark eyes flicking between mine, as if he was waiting for me to say it was all a joke. "You are serious about this?"

"Are you?"

"I am very serious. I want to spend the rest of my life with you by my side."

"Aren't we already doing that," I asked.

"It's not the same Asperity! Its marriage, it's a celebration, its-"

"A title, Clopin, it's a title. There is no difference to doing what we're doing now as opposed to having a title over our heads and having the whole world know that we're in a relationship and always asking when are we going to have kids and how many and when is the next one coming-"

"Never mind." He threw the blankets off himself and onto me, and got out of the bed. He pulled his trousers on and then his shirts. "It was obviously not the thing to talk about."

I wrestled the blankets off my head and wrapped them around my chest. "Oh Clopin come off it and come back. It's not that big of a deal-"

"Sacrebleu Asperity, it is a big deal. At least to me it is." He resumed getting dressed, pulling on his stockings and shoes, tying his belt around him and then pulling his gloves on. "I take it then that you don't want to be married?"

"No, there's no point to it. We don't need to waste our time on a ceremony to tell everyone what they already know."

He looked at me sadly. It was like his heart was breaking and I was holding it in my hands. He gave a long, aching look at me.

"Clopin…"

"I'll see you tonight, Asperity." And he left the tent.

That was the last in depth conversation we had.

*End Flashback*

That was a month ago. After reviewing it in my head for the hundredth time, in the presence of one of the only logical minds I knew, I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"Maybe it was my fault," I whispered. My shoulders sagged and I sighed.

Laverne finished wrapping my hand and dumped the water out of the basin over the side of the Cathedral wall. Hopping back to me, she took the damp linen and wiped my face. "There, there, dear. It was a mistake, all lovers have quarrels. Even Hugo and Djoli have their arguments."

"What do Djoli and I have?" Hugo came to join us, eating stale bread and spewing crumbs from his mouth.

Laverne gave him a deadpan look. "Never mind, go scare some pidgins."

"I should be going." I stood up, brushed off my skirts, and combed my hair out of my face. "I need to help Esmeralda with Zephyr today."

"Asperity go see Clopin and apologize."

"Not until he does. He's the one that started it." It was a blatant lie, I had been the one to laugh at his proposal and then get angry at him later when he brought it up again. I can't remember my exact words but it was something along the lines of, "it's the stupidest idea and marriage is literally the most useless ceremony to come into existence and become a social norm," but I was determined to be right.

Even though it hurt like hell to see Clopin in the streets and instead of smiling at me, having him turn away in disappointment and seeing the hurt and frustration in his eyes.

"Asperity, if you don't do something soon to make up with Clopin, he's going to do something and you may not like it." With that, she left the room and Hugo stared at me, his mouth full of stale bread.

"Are you having problems with Clopin?"

"Oh good heavens, good bye Hugo." I stomped out of the bell tower and out of the Cathedral, my hands finally stinging in pain from punching the wooden beam. Seeing Laverne had done absolutely nothing to help my situation. She was taking his side.

"This is bloody ridiculous," I muttered to myself. "So ridiculous. It's a stupid idea, unnecessary and boring."

And yet as I looked up across the street and saw a couple who was in fact married, and a couple who had just been married conversing with each other, I felt a pang of jealousy and longing. That could be me… Clopin and me. For a moment, I played with the idea that maybe we could get married, but almost immediately threw the thought away. It was pointless. But again, I thought about Esmeralda's wedding ceremony, the joy on her face, the love in Sun God's eyes as he looked at her, the pride I felt at seeing her so happy, and the way her mother cried in happiness. The way Clopin had looked at me that day was a way I had never seen him look at me.

I imagined what it would be like to have people cry about how happy we were, to have someone be proud about me finding a man that would love and respect me.

I was back in the Court of Miracles now, but I remembered nothing of the journey back from the Cathedral. At least my feet remembered the way back, or I'd have been lost.

"Asperity. Come here."

At the sound of my name, I looked around. My eyes finally fell on a familiar figure-pitch black hair, dark eyes, a strong nose and pointed face. And yet I was afraid.

"Asperity, I wish to speak with you. Now, come here."

Inside, I groaned with dread.

"Asperity…" they warned.

"I'm coming." I cleared my mind and put on a smile.

"I don't see why you're smiling now. It's been too long since we have spoken. And now I hear rumors of you're being unhappy?" They clicked their tongue at me.

"I don't know what-"

"I'm sure you don't. You can't possibly know why my son is speaking of marriage and how he hasn't been able to enjoy a good night's rest in the past month, or why he's come to me in frustration because you won't speak to him, could you?" Clopin's mother's eyes flashed dangerously and my courage faltered. "Come inside, dear. We have much to discuss."