NOTE: You will not understand what is going on in this story if you have not read my other fic, Petals of a Grey Rose. Seriously. None of this will make any sense to you. So I suggest you either read that first, or find something else to read. Or struggle through this, confused. Whatever you like.
Well, here I am again, folks. This is the long-awaited sequel (I feel so pro saying that . . .) to Petals! I don't know about you, but I sure am excited. I was originally going to post this a couple months ago, but tragically my computer died (sob) and thus all my files were destroyed. So this may be less-than-satisfactory since I had to try to remember it all. I know not much happens in this chapter, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. And of course, review, :P
Well, I don't want to say too much. So without further ado or explanation:
Chapter 1: A Beginning
"Here you go, sir." Erik passed the bottle of medication to the young man. "This is strong; it'll clear a cough up in a few days."
"Thank you." The man handed him the money and left. Sighing, Erik put the money away in the counter and sat down heavily on the chair behind it. Business had been busy all that morning, but by afternoon it had slowed considerably. Now he was waiting for 18h so he could close the shop for dinner.
But it wasn't his work in the apothecary that really wore him out. It was Madeline's condition that concerned him. She's getting ridiculously pregnant! Erik decided. It was true, to some extent; she was due in any day now, and she was huge. Even Erik, who had seen few pregnant women in his life, knew her size wasn't normal. The doctors had all told them she was just fine, assuring him that she was just carrying at a different height than most women did. Maddi herself tried to assure him she was alright, but he couldn't ignore the state she was in. She couldn't stand up for too long, and she had horrible back pain. She kept telling him it wasn't worth panicking about, that she and the baby were going to be just fine. He wished he could believe her, but for some reason he couldn't stop himself fretting.
He pulled out his pocket watch. There was still half an hour before closing time. Maybe I can get away with sneaking up a little early . . .
"Erik?" the voice behind him was cautious and shaky. He jerked around. Madeline was standing at the bottom of the staircase, leaning against the railing.
"What's wrong?" he was surprised at how frantic his own voice sounded. He got up and laid his hands on his shoulders. He noticed how heavily she was breathing.
"Erik, I . . ." she looked up at him, her face flushed ". . . I think I'm in labor."
Erik had been in so many distressing situations in his life, he'd learned when it was important to be calm and when it didn't matter. He'd run over their plan for the day Madeline gave birth in his head more times than anyone could count, and he'd always reminded himself that he would need to be confident and composed, for his wife's sake. It had almost been a kind of mantra: stay collected for Madeline.
"Do you fear any pressure?" he decided to ask. It was a decent question, he reasoned. He kept his voice controlled.
"Of course I'm feeling pressure, Erik!" She shrieked "I'm having a bloody baby!"
With that, Erik flew into an absolute panic.
Without thinking, he scooped her up in his arms and ran out the door into the street.
"Slow down!" Madeline was tugging on his collar "For god's sake, man, I'm not dying!"
People in the street stopped to stare at them. Erik plowed right through the crowd, nearly knocking over an elderly couple, and practically threw himself through the door into Henri Boufard's shop. The cheerful little bell rang when the door closed behind them. Erik stood in the middle of the room with his very ruffled wife in his arms. Henri came out of the back room, wiping his hands.
"Good afterno-Madeline!?" he dropped the handkerchief "Erik, what-"
"The baby!" Erik squeaked "She's having a baby!"
"What?" Henri leaned himself against a wall, suddenly looked just as rosy as his daughter
"Here? Now?!"
"Yes, now!"
"Shut up, Erik!" Madeline rapped his cheek with her knuckles. "Honestly! And put me down, will you?" Dumbly, not sure what else to do, Erik set her on her feet. "You'd think I'm dying the way you two're acting. Now, let's all go upstairs to sort this all out." She hobbled toward the stairs.
Mutely, the men followed.
---
"How far away does the midwife live, then?" Erik growled. He paced the floor in the Boufard's living room, fiddling with the little tin whistle he'd found in his pocket.
"Darling, why don't you just sit down?"
"But-"
"It would make me feel better."
Still running the little tube through his hands, Erik sat on the arm of the coach. Madeline was lying on her back on the coach proper, twiddling her thumbs over her huge abdomen. He looked down at her. She didn't look anxious at all, really. Perhaps her breathing was still a tad heavier than he'd like, but she had to show she was feeling something, at least.
"You're calm."
"Of course." She didn't look up from her hands "I need to be, to make up for the state you're in." she smiled.
"Henri's taking so long. It's wearing on my nerves."
"When's the baby gonna get here?" Genevieve asked loudly. She was kneeling on the floor with a pencil and some paper.
"At this rate, a few days from now."
"Shush, will you, Erik?" Madeline rolled her eyes. "A little while yet, Genny. What's that you're drawing there?"
"You." The little girl held up the paper. Erik took one look and nearly choked holding in his laugher. Madeline opened her mouth and made sounds like she was going to say something. "See," Genny pointed "You still have the baby in you. I made it as realistic as I could."
"You are quite the realist." Erik smirked. Then he realized that Madeline might not approve of his joking. He looked down at her, raising his eyebrows. She gave him one quick glance before bursting into laughter herself. Eventually tears started rolling towards her temples, though Erik couldn't see that from his place rolling on the floor. Genevieve ended up curled up in stitches, too. For some time, none of them could say a word.
---
"Here we are!" Henri threw open the door. "Everything is fine! I've brought the midwife! We're going to be just fine!"
Madeline opened her eyes. "Oh. You're back." She closed them again.
"You took a long time." Erik noted calmly from the armchair.
"Hello Papa!" Genevieve said from the kitchenette, where she was washing dishes.
"Oh, um . . .' Henri felt a little foolish "did anything happen while I was gone?"
"I walked around the house three times." Madeline sat up. "Erik made the bed."
"I'm washing the cups!"
"Uh, well then . . ." He stepped into the room. A middle-aged woman and a teenaged girl followed him in. "Erik, I don't know if you've met these two yet, but this is Madame Cosette," he pointed to the woman "And this is Felicienne Simonette."
"A pleasure." Erik stood up and nodded.
"You are M. Destler, then?" Mme. Cosette smiled pleasantly. "A pleasure indeed. And then there is your lovely wife." She beamed at Madeline. "How are you feeling?"
"Alright I suppose. It's not painful yet."
"How long's it been would you say?"
"An hour and a half, two hours." Holding the coach for balance, she heaved herself to her feet. "The bed's all ready."
"Wonderful. Felicienne, go set up, will you?" the girl scurried away down the hall. "That'll be ready in a few minutes then." She turned to Henri and gave him a list of things he should have ready, 'just in case'. Erik stood next to his wife and hugged her.
"Here we are, then." He kissed her temple.
"I suppose."
"Are you frightened?"
She snickered. "Not any more than you, at least." She sighed "Though looking at your face that doesn't mean very much."
"No." Erik nodded "I suppose it doesn't."
"Madame Destler," Mme. Cosette tapped her on the shoulder "I hate to interrupt, I really do, but I think it would be best if we got you settled as soon as possible."
"You're right." Erik watched her step away. She leaned it to kiss him quickly on the lips. "Don't worry too much, will you?" she grinned and followed the midwife down the hall.
Erik was just a step or two behind her when Henri grabbed his shoulder. "Erik!" his voice was suddenly very high-pitched "Where are you going?"
Erik looked at his horrified face and raised an eyebrow "Well, I was thinking it would be rather nice to go support my wife in her hour of desperate need."
"Are you insane?" The door down the hall echo as it closed.
"Interestingly, I was going to ask you precisely the same question."
"You thought you would be permitted to watch!?"
"Well, I was planning on being with her, yes." He pulled his arm out of Henri's grip.
"But . . . but that's not . . . that's not decent!"
"Decent?" Erik couldn't even believe they were having such an argument "She's my wife, it's not as if I've never seen her naked before!"
"Monsieur Destler!" Henri looked as if someone had just been brutally murdered in front of his very eyes "My child is in the room!"
Erik craned his neck to look over at Genevieve. She was bouncing up and down on the chair, rhythmically drying a plate and singing a little song. "I'm going to have a nephew! I'm going to have a niece!" He looked back at Henri's still-shocked face.
"She looks completely scandalized."
Henri sighed. "Honestly, Erik. Please. At least stay in here for a while. It's not our place in there." He leaned in close "that's women's business, you see."
"Oh for the love . . ." Erik threw up his hands "fine, fine." I'll stay in here. But if she screams-"
"Just sit, Erik."
---
For an hour, the grandfather clock in the corner was the only sound in the room. Henri had set about cleaning the guest room, more to give himself something to do rather than a precaution in case Erik had to stay the night like he claimed. Genevieve had been told to reorganize the cupboards, which she did without complaint. She had finally calmed downed enough to pick up on the tension that the men were practically oozing. It would be best to do what they asked, she had realized, and keep as far out of their way as possible.
The tine whistle had now been taken apart and polished countless times. Still, Erik felt too nervous when it came to actually playing the little thing. What if, if he did play, something did go wrong down the hall, and he couldn't hear it because he was playing some foolish jig to pass the time? So with that logic in mind, the whistle stayed silent. So did the room down the hall.
Eventually Henri reemerged into the living room and flopped down into the armchair. "There, that's done." He brushed some hair out of his face and glanced out the window. "It's getting dark out there."
"It's the middle of November." Erik said, pocketing the silver instrument.
"What is the date, exactly, anyways?" Henri picked up some logs from the hearth and placed them in the fireplace.
"November twelfth, Eighteen-seventy-one."
"Heh." The older man struck a match and lit the paper that covered the wood. "The little one won't be the first in the family with a November birthday. Mine's on the twentieth, Maddi's is the thirtieth. Opale's was the fifteenth." He smiled, even though it was a little crooked.
"Mine's in October, though." Genevieve said from the table.
"Yes, yes it is. I'll have to get used to you being ten now." Her father closed the screen and sat down again. "It looks like you're almost done there."
"Uh-huh." The girl's bun bobbed up and down as she nodded. "Most of the stuff was in order already."
"Well, then. I'd like to talk with Erik alone, if you don't mind going to your room for a bit." Henri sounded apologetic.
"Alright." Genevieve hopped away. If anything, she seemed happy with being excused from the room. Erik watched her skip out of the room.
"Erik," Henri sighed the name like it was a grim diagnosis "Erik, why did you bring her here?"
Erik swung his head slowly to look at the soon-to-be-grandfather. Henri was slouching in his seat, suddenly looking like he was in his sixties rather than his forties. "It was an automatic reaction. I wasn't thinking at the time." His voice became more severe "She'll not be moving now, I won't let her."
"I know, I know. It's just . . . it's a bad place. A cursed bed. You know that."
Erik blinked. "I'm afraid I don't."
"You know what happened . . ." Henri leaned forward and dropped his face into his hands. His voice was muffled through his fingers ". . . what happened the last time a woman gave birth in that room. In that very same bed."
"I hadn't a clue you were so superstitious. Personally I thought you above such idiocy as curses."
"It's not superstition." Henri huffed, raising his head. "It's only that the idea, what's happening, it makes me remember. Makes me think about last time. It is . . . it gives me an unsettling feeling, I mean to say."
Erik let out a long breath through his teeth. "Madeline is strong."
"So was Opale."
"I'm sure she was. You've told me many times. But I am confident in Maddi. I trust her. If something is going wrong, she will not hesitate to get more help."
"It's true." Henri admitted. He twirled the wedding ring that was still on his finger. "I'm proud of her. You're right to say she's strong. Incredibly strong. What with what happened, between the kidnap-"
"-And the rape." Erik finished the sentence for him.
"Yes, that."
"At the opera house, sometimes the stage hands went after the ballet rats when they were drunk." Erik felt a little odd; his old life did not come up in conversation much anymore. "Every so often, one of the girls would be assaulted. I tried to rescue them, when I could."
"That's very noble of you."
"Of course, some always slip through my fingers." He brushed some dust off the side table with the back of his hand. "It destroyed some of them. Ruined their lives. In the more extreme cases they had to leave the opera, many of them. Couldn't trust people again, afraid to be touched, to talk to people. Afraid of the dark."
"Madeline was never like that."
"True. She never was." He looked up into Henri's eyes. "It worries me."
"Why do you say that?"
"She refuses to talk about it. She just clamps her mouth shut if anything related to it comes up."
"It must bother her something awful."
"It haunts her." Erik nodded. "I am not surprised she is not inclined to discuss it. But I think it would be good for her to talk with me. Sometimes, in the middle of the day when I need to fetch something upstairs and she doesn't know I'm there, I pass by our room and I see her. She cries and believes I don't know."
"That is troubling." Henri drummed his fingers nervously on the arm of the chair.
"I know it would not be a problem if she would at least speak to me about it. In fact," he shifted uncomfortably "it is affecting our lives in other ways."
"For example?" Henri looked very worried.
"I'm still a virgin, for one." Henri looked like he was about to jump out of his skin. Erik raised a hand to keep him from exploding. "Let me explain. It bothers me because," he said it slowly so he would have time to choose his words "I would like to have children . . . of my own, if you will."
"I understand that." Henri said, his face returning to a more natural cover. "I have been meaning to ask you, in fact, if it is not too bold for me to do so – how do you feel about all this? I can only imagine – your wife having another man's baby!"
Erik stretched his legs in front of him. He'd discussed this with Madeline a few times. "I promised I would raise them as my own. I will. For most of my life I was not expecting to have children at all, so I am not at all averse to having children in the house. It is only that it's not my child. I will welcome them all the same, but some time it the future I think it would be rather nice to have a child that I knew I had fathered."
"I suppose I can understand that feeling." Henri leaned back and steeped his fingers.
---
Genevieve was in the middle of choosing her outfit for the next day when a thought crossed her mind that made her stop dead in her tracks. She chewed on her lip: should I go ask? Eventually the curiosity became too intense and she had to run out into the living room.
The men were still sitting in the same places they had been before. They had been speaking to each other in low voices, but Erik turned when he heard her walk into the room. She stopped quickly and poked at the floor with her toe. She suddenly felt very embarrassed.
"Is there something the matter, Genny?" her father asked.
"No," she said shyly "I was just wondering something."
"Go ahead and ask, then." Erik urged "You're not interrupting."
"Um, I just realized, and I started to wonder . . ." she looked up at Henri "if the baby is inside of Maddi, how does it get out?"
Once again, the clock's ticking dominated the room.
"No one told you?" Erik gave Henri a harsh glance.
"Of course not!" Henri nearly shouted when he found his voice.
"Very well then." Erik moved to lean against the back of the coach. "You know how the child is conceived?"
"Yeah."
"Erik!" Henri turned red yet again. Erik ignored him.
"Well, you know the place where the ovum and sperm-"
"Erik!"
"-join. Since that's where the baby grows, it –"
"Erik!"
"-exits by way of where the man entered-"
"Erik Destler!" Henri roared as he jumped up. "Will you kindly stop corrupting my child?!"
For the third time, the ticking was the only sound. Erik gave Henri an uninterested look.
"M. Boufard," he asked casually "are you certain you are French?"
Henri looked taken aback. "Well, yes. But I don't see what that has to do with any-"
"Because you are starting to sound uncannily like a stuck-up Englishmen."
Genevieve instantly collapsed in laughter. Henri turned so pale, Erik almost started to worry for his health. The older man slid back into the chair, and did not say anything for some time.
---
It was 2h30 when Erik jerked up in bed. He'd eventually settled in the guest room, deciding that rest would probably be good for him. He had taken a few hours to fall asleep, apparently only to be woken up again. His tiredness didn't even cross his mind, though: he'd been woken up by a scream.
He was out of bed and in the hallway within the time it took to blink. The apartment was pitch black, but he knew it was Henri who ran out and stood by him a second later.
"Did you hear it too?" Henri asked.
"Yes." Erik said. He saw the sliver of light a few feet away. It was spilling out from under a door: the door to the room where Madeline was.
Before Henri could saw anything more, Erik had pushed the door open and flown inside.
Another scream ripped through the air and slapped Erik's ears. He ignored it as best he could and let his eyes settle on Madeline. The midwife and her apprentice were crowded around the bottom of the bed. Madeline had her eyes squeezed shut as she let out another sob of pain. He didn't wait another second to sprung forward and cup her face.
She squinted up at his face. It briefly crossed Erik's mind that he wasn't wearing his mask. "Erik?" She was hoarse, and he felt it himself "What are you – aaah!"
"There we are, Madame!" the midwife trumpeted triumphantly "Number two's out!"
"Number two?" something in Erik's gut twisted. He looked down at the other end of the bed. The assistant was holding one screeching baby; Mme Cosette was wiping of another.
"Tabernac . . ." he breathed. Oddly, it sounded more like a prayer than a curse, like it normally did. Mme. Cosette Wrapped the babies both and, smiling, handed them over.
"A boy and a girl." She declared. "You did wonderfully, Mme. Destler."
Shaking, Erik took one of the bundles. The other was laid in Madeline's arms. Then the woman retreated back to the end of the bed.
"Look at her." Madeline panted. "Lord, she's beautiful." She grinned weakly.
Erik had to agree. The baby was tiny and pink, like most babies. But she already had tight blond curls on her head. Madeline ran her hand other them tenderly. "Look at that." The baby squinted up at them; her eyes were the palest blue he'd ever seen.
Oddly, he suddenly stopped worrying about being a father. All his anger for not fathering them himself, his fear of telling them the truth one day, everything, disappeared. Erik felt a strange, profound contentment. I could get used to this.
He turned to look at the boy. He had the little wisps of hair already, too, though his were dark and sparse. He was even smaller than his sister, though not by much. He'd stopped crying as well, and had also decided to tentatively open his eyes. Erik froze.
The baby had the darkest brown eyes he'd ever seen. They were not from the Boufards, he knew that for sure. And he had a feeling they weren't his.
But, glancing at Madeline, he realized he really and truly didn't care.