AN:
So, I've gone on a bit of a mad Disney streak at the moment, since watching The Lion King in the pictures and reverting back to my 5 year old self. But you watch these movies when you're older and see hidden depths you've never noticed before. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of those. I mean, seriously, how could our parents let us watch this? The song Hellfire is basically Frollo saying he's so horny for Esmeralda he's going to burn down all of Paris and then kill her if she doesn't sleep with him. Not exactly great material for young children, but, as it was a Disney cartoon, parents trust it. Message to parents: Watch it first. Not that we notice stuff like that when we're kids, but it's scarring when we grow up and realise what we were exposed to. Anyway, this is just a little fic which centres around Frollo's determination that Esmeralda accept his proposal. I do not own Hunchback of Notre Dame. That right belongs to Disney and to Victor Hugo. Okay, here we go.
Pacing the halls of the Palace of Justice, looking fouler than ever before, was Judge Claude Frollo. His bony fingers were crushing his cap, wringing it, tugging it, this way and that, as anxiety set in. There was a voice in the back of his mind, that underused conscience, which said that he may very well be going mad. He could see from his prime spot a panaroma of almost the whole of Paris, and watched with little to no emotion as it burned to the ground.
Nearly every place, save here, Notre Dame, some other historical buildings, was made of wood. It was kindle and the fire was slowly spreading, unchecked and with no-one important or powerful caring enough to stop it. His Paris, the Paris he had lived and worked in all his life, which had given him his station and over which he should preside had been razed to the ground by him. People ran amuck as soldiers came to their houses, screaming, shouting, pleading, begging. People had died he knew, but he did not care.
Somewhere in the bowels of this place was Esmeralda. So were so many other Gypsies. He had had Quasimodo chained, in preparation for this evening's events. Though he wished it were different, he knew the Gypsy girl would refuse him. She was brave to the point of self-destruction and proud too, just like him. She would rather spend what time she had left in pain, horrific, agonising pain, than spend the rest of her life with him. Though he was convinced fire awaited her when she passed, she was not and that made her all the more determined. All the more foolish.
That a woman would choose a painful, torturous death over him was not vexed him. It was that if she chose, he would have no other choice than to have it done. He would have to kill her and with that act he would feel himself forever damned. He would have killed for no other reason than this dissastification of his carnal imaginings. He was sure, horrendously, piteously sure, that the Mother Mary would not forgive him such a sin. He could not lie to the Virgin when he reached the gates of Heaven. She would know, as the others might not, that witchcraft had nothing to do with it. Lust, that one of the seven deadly sins, had everything.
Frollo had grown up the product of an unhappy marriage. His father had been distant and cold, but had been revered and respected. His mother had been less an equal partner. She was there, Frollo had heard his father shout one day, to sire a son and to keep his bed warm, no more, no less. Consequently, young Claude had found his mother hanging from a curtain rail when he was six years old. After that, his father had cared less and less for him. He had said that Claude was 'weak' like his mama and that he could not stomach the sight of him. Years of hard work, lies, deceit and brutality had brought Claude to his current station and a run-in with a group of vicious Gypsies during his down-and-out days had sparked within him a determination greater than any before: to be in a position to eradicate them.
Now he was. He was here, he was poised on the brink of genocide, a genocide he had hoped for and welcomed…and his heart, his blackened, shrivelled, unworkable heart, was not in it. He could care less. He was bewitched, had been bewitched, by that goddamn Gypsy harlot! Even thinking the Lord's name in vain made him shudder and he said a quick Hail Mary underneath his breath for his misconduct. Lord knew how many Hail Marys he would have to say for what he must do this night, yet it must be done.
He had allowed himself, only briefly, in moments of swirling minded solitude, to imagine that she would say yes to him. There would be no humiliation, no mockery, no burning. He would have her and in time she would grow to love him. Somehow, where once there had only been lust, she would seek out a heart he did not think, knew, did not exist. Yes, lust was all it was. To him, love was and would always be a foreign word and feeling. But he supposed the gypsy girl…Esmeralda, could somehow find a heart within him, if she tried. In his eyes and mind, though he would never say, he believed she was capable of anything.
The night would soon be upon him, black and bleak and unforgiving, yet lit with the light of a thousand fires. In a matter of hours, he would add one more fire to that array. There was no point denying it. Gone was the time for maddening dreams, gone was the hope of some miracle revelation. Miracles, belief in miracles, was for Gypsies. Only God could work miracles and though he hoped and prayed every day for forgiveness, he knew, deep down, dark, somewhere within him, that no amount of begging would turn God's ear to him again. He was adrift in a sea of doubt and sin.
Today, he would kill the Gypsy girl and any others who stood in his way. Today, he had decided, he would kill Quasimodo, that weight around his neck. Today, since God was no longer with him, he may even kill the priest of Notre Dame. Tonight would be a night of death. With no hope of redemption, what good was there in good deeds? Tomorrow he would awaken renewed, ready to reap his vengeance on Paris. It was the misdeeds of every single peasant of the capital that had damned his soul to Hell. It was their treacheries that had lead him to murder, torture and cruelty. And so he would see he did not make the voyage to Satan unaccompanied.
AN:
Well, what did you think? Random I know. Please review!