Warnings: Canon typical violence; harm to children; mentioned child prostitution.
Notes: I tried to look at a map of Paris so I could be all ~accurate~ but maps are hard and Paris is big and all I know is there are docks on the Siene. Just go with it.
Maman = Mama/Mommy
Les Larmes de la Sirène = The Mermaid's Tears
A Flea in Your Ear
Porthos sat in an out of the way corner of the docks along the Seine, tucked up between two shipping crates. A runty boy, he was dressed in worn clothes that were little more than rags held together with prayer and stubbornness. Faded, stained, and brown, they were almost as dirty as the boy himself, and when Porthos was a man he would never wear anything like them again. He would have golden rings in his ears like some of the sailors he saw along the quay, and he would wear bright colors, and bandanas, and his jackets would never have holes or missing buttons. And I'll have shoes, he thought, wrinkling his bare toes. Tall, sturdy boots that click against the pier when I walk.
His daydream was interrupted by the spray of the river mist cutting through his thin shirt, making him shiver, but Porthos didn't care. He was watching the ships.
The ships bearing cargo through France and beyond came up along the river from the ocean, and one day Porthos was going to sail away on one. As soon as he was big enough, he was going to join a crew and go explore new places. Better places. Maybe one day he would even find a boat to take him back to the land his mother's people came from. Maman told all the best stories, about trees taller than buildings and grass that rolled like water, and family that looked after each other.
And then Maman died, and Porthos was alone.
He tried to become a cabin boy, but the merchant captain he approached said he didn't want any cabin boys younger than ten. Porthos thought he might be ten, but he wasn't really sure, especially since Maman died.
The captain didn't believe him.
So Porthos stayed at the docks. He didn't have anywhere else to go, and one day he would find the right ship, the right captain who would let him join a crew. In the meantime he begged for scraps at the nearby tavern, and ran messages for merchants and sailors alike for whatever coins they were willing to give him. He was always cold, and always hungry, and never really slept deeply, but he was alive, and he was going to stay that way.
"Stop, thief!" an outcry went up a few piers down, a mass of people seeming to boil into a frenzy of arms and shouting voices. Porthos climbed up on top of one of the shipping crates, the better to see what was happening.
Unseen by the men who snarled and stamped, a tiny figure glided away from the knot of people, moving around the edges of the chaos like a shadow merging with the night. She – for it was a little girl in a ragged green dress, with tangled hair like old straw – darted two and fro among crates and anchor lines, making her way slowly but steadily from the source of the disturbance toward the main road that would take her from the docks. She never ran, never seemed to be in a hurry, and yet something told Porthos that she was the thief.
He wondered what she'd stolen.
The girl darted to the left of the crate Porthos was standing on, occupying the same space Porthos had been sitting in while she cocked her head to listen for pursuers. At least, that's what Porthos thought she was doing.
Curious, he dropped down from his perch, landing beside her.
She started, but did not scream, instantly turning to face him and pressing her back to the crate behind her. Her eyes were wide and blue, like the ocean was supposed to be. Like it was in Maman's stories.
"What did you steal?" Porthos asked. The girl didn't seem to have anything valuable. It must not have been very big, whatever it was.
The girl's lips parted, and to Porthos' horror, she began to cry. Big, fat tears rolled down her rapidly reddening cheeks, her breath hitching as she rocked back and forth. "P-please don't tell," she choked out between sobs. "I'm j-just so hungry and I'm too young to t-turn to whoring and my brother, he's sick!"
Porthos crossed his arms and hugged himself, not sure what to do. He didn't like the girl crying, and he felt awful that he'd made her so sad and scared. He tried to pat her on the shoulder, but she flinched away from his touch and cried harder, her hands over her mouth to muffle the noise.
"I won't tell!" Porthos whispered, looking over his shoulder to make sure no one was close enough to overhear. He'd never stolen anything, but he knew what it was like to be hungry. Maybe he could show the girl how to beg and run messages, and then she wouldn't have to steal anymore.
He held out his hand. "Come on, I know a safe place."
It was safer than standing between two crates on the docks anyway, if not actually safe. That was another thing Porthos was going to have when he got bigger. He was going to have his own room in a house, and he was going to be big enough that no one would dare hurt him or rob him while he was sleeping.
The girl stared at him for a long moment, but another look behind them showed that men were moving along the quay, poking their heads in all the crooks and crannies.
The girl took his hand, and Porthos led her away, to the alley behind Les Larmes de la Sirène where Porthos begged. The walls of the surrounding buildings kept the wind at bay, and there was only one way in or out, making it a good place to sleep.
Porthos showed the girl to the corner where he kept a few odds and ends inside an old barrel the innkeeper let him use. He had a potato sack that he used as a blanket, a wooden bowl, one of his mother's old shawls, worn so thin in places it looked like a spider's web, and a few coins that he kept hidden beneath a stone at the bottom of the barrel.
"You don't have to steal," Porthos was saying as he wrapped his mother's shawl around the girl. "I beg here, when the sailors are drunk, and lots of times they'll give me coins just to go away, or the soldiers will pay for me to hold their horse's reins while they mount. And if you run messages for the ship officers, you'll make enough to eat most days." He sat down next to the girl after wrapping the potato sack around his own shoulders. "I'm Porthos."
Calm and dry eyed now, she slit her eyes at him, chewing her lips. Her hair was matted in places from going too long without a brush or a wash, and it was hard to tell what color her skin was under all the dirt. Porthos guessed she was fair, based on the eyes. "What's your name?" he asked.
"Why?"
"So I have something to call you." He smiled. Maman had always said he had a smile that could melt butter. Porthos had tasted butter once, as a special treat during the winter holidays. It was good.
The girl's cheeks reddened and her eyes narrowed further. "I mean why are you being nice to me? So you can turn me in and get a reward? Or are you old enough that you think if you help me I'll flip my skirt?"
Porthos laughed. "Flip your skirt? You?"
His laughter was short lived. Faster than a rearing stallion, the girl's fists shot out, one catching Porthos in the shoulder, and the other glancing off his collar bone. "Ow!" he complained, trying to wrestle the girl into submission. It wasn't as easy as it should have been. She was smaller than him, but she knew what she was doing and she bit and thrashed and kicked, hands seeking out all his soft places.
Porthos screamed, tears springing to his eyes and blood gushing from his nose when the girl had headbutted him. He released her, clapping his hands to his face, and she pressed her advantage, sweeping his feet and kicking him in the side. When he tried to get up she kicked him again, drawing a knife that he hadn't known she had.
"Whatever you want from me, you aren't getting it," the girl spat at him. Her lip was bloody, making it look like she wore the lip paint favored by whores and high class ladies alike.
"Don't want anything," he wheezed. But that wasn't true. He had wanted something from the girl.
He'd wanted a friend.
The girl pressed the point of her knife to his face, drawing a red hot line of pain down from his brow to his jaw. The cut was shallow, but it bled like he was dying and stung like hot oil. "Watch where you put your eyes," the girl said. "Come near me again and I'll blind you."
Keeping him in her sight, she gathered up Porthos' scattered treasures. She took his coins and his bowl, his potato sack used to carry the hoard. Porthos watched in silence, blood obscuring his vision and peppering his every breath. It wasn't until the girl picked up his mother's shawl that he moved, trying to get to his feet.
She pointed the knife at him again.
"Not that, please," he said, his voice nasal and strange. "It was my Maman's."
Before the girl could answer, the back door of the tavern crashed open. "Oi! What's going on back here?!"
They both froze. The girl's back was to the door, hiding her knife from view. In a move too quick for Porthos to follow, she concealed it again and turned to face Old Jean, the tavern keeper, her face already scrunched in an expression of hysterical sorrow.
"These men were trying to hurt m-me," the girl sobbed out. "And Porthos saved me. He was so b-b-brave!" she exclaimed. "But they hurt him too!" She drew out the last word in a wail that made Porthos want to cover his ears.
Taken aback, Old Jean looked at Porthos. "That true, boy?"
Porthos held his breath. The girl stared at him with her eyes like water, pleading. Her life hung in his hands. If he cried thief, well no one would care about her stealing his things, but if they searched her and found whatever it was she'd taken on the docks, she'd be imprisoned or hanged.
Porthos opened his mouth, not entirely sure himself what he was going to say.
"Beg pardon, monsieur. My girl was having hysterics. Won't happen again."
Old Jean tilted his head. Then he smiled. "Your girl, huh? Well, keep it down."
With that, he returned to the tavern.
As soon as Jean was gone, the girl whirled on Porthos. He almost expected to find her knife in his face again, but instead she blotted at his cuts with the hem of her dress, heedless of the fact that she was revealing her skinny legs. Porthos froze, gritting his teeth against the pain of his nose and the cut down his face. When the girl had finished fussing and lowered her skirt, he jerked his hand toward the potato sack filled with his things.
"Take it and go. Just leave me Maman's shawl."
The girl shook her head. "My name is Flea," she whispered in his ear. "And I'm not taking that anymore. I'm taking you. Come home with me."
Porthos cocked his head to look at her out of his good eye. "Home? Where do you live?"
She smiled at him, fierce and frightening and beautiful with her blood streaked face. "The Court of Miracles."
Miracles? Porthos considered.
"Will you teach me to fight like you?"
Flea slung an arm around his shoulders, standing on her tip toes so that she could reach. "'Course we will."
She smiled and Porthos smiled back, setting the cut on his face bleeding anew. "Alright then."
He let Flea wear his mother's shawl all the way there.