A/N: Flynn Rider didn't do backstories. So I will.
The rain is flooding over the broken glasses, leaking in. It seems it couldn't be colder. But then someone pounds to the door and sister Maria Agatha smooths out her thin habit and goes to open it. Strong blow of the wind shoots in and everyone freezes from cold.
A snotty kid stands on the doorstep, his hand hold by a lank woman in a ragged dress. She scrapes out the greenish mold from the door's frame by her skinny finger. Sister Maria Agatha is afraid she will make a hole in it, so she rasps, "Yes?"
The crusty smiles, trying to hide her toothless gums. She pushes the child in front of her and points at him, as if she's presenting some worthy good.
"Will there be a place for 'im?" she asks. Takes boy's arm and lifts it. "'E's strong, even. And ain't stupid. Even learned 'ow to read, just look at 'im! Just ain't willing to do no job, still thinkin' 'bout some codswallop. Mother, let 'er rest in peace, was firm with 'im, oh, ya don't imagine! But she 'appended to be dead, she get consamptioun, poor thing. May be it ain't all that bad, 'cuz I dunno what he can grow up to, I'm even scared to think. She had no 'usband, poor little woman, this tramp escaped, so the kid – of course! – was sent straight to me; I'm the closest neighbour. But I ain't gonna fed 'him for me money, what else! Me own brats want to eat gobble too often. And 'e ain't trouble-maker, sometimes's strange, like 'e can't 'ear whatcha say, but enough to tan 'is skin – and immediately, 'ow busy 'e is!"
Sister Maria Agatha leans over, to look at the boy's puffy face, traces of tears on it. He tries to stop them now. His jaw is shaking.
"How old is he?"
"'Ow can I know… 'bout four springs 'till master run away… yep, it was straight after the war. So 'es 'bout five."
"I'm sorry… madame. The orphanage is full."
The crusty's face freezes for a moment. She thinks intensively, inner dilemma is traced on her face with a painful wrinkle. Eventually, she sighs and reaches her apron's pocket, which must've been white someday.
"You're always the same!" She spits with a scorn. "You ain't getting somethin', we can't come to anythin'. They'd get and get, but to do something like Christians should – no, there's no one to do!"
Finally, she clams up, pulls out a necklace, which reflection is shimmering gold in the rain's drops. She looks over, which is unnecessary anyway, because the orphanage lies far from the city's broads, and then blows at it, and pushes in sister Maria Agatha's hands.
"Mother of 'im had a lot of those, master was givin' 'er the stars from the sky, even, but everyone came and started takin' it away, what they needed, when the poor woman died, and nothin' left. I didn't take nothin' for me, even if you'd like, you had no time." A greedy glint gives her muddy eyes some color for a moment. "Just so the kid 'ad some future. So you'll take that, sister, and 'e could 'ave some place 'ere."
The boy looks as the nun's vulture claws wrap over the necklace, stroke the diamond charm and disappear somewhere in the folds of her habit.
Two evil women had stroke a bargain.
"It's not yours!" he shouts, to one of them. "You can't! Not yours!"
The crusty grimaces in a nasty smile.
"And 'e 'ave the gift of a gab, as well! Enough to 'it 'im, just strongly, and immediately, 'e shuts up!" A hyena's snicker comes out from her throat. "Uh, but now I 'ave runnin'. 'Usband comes 'ome in a moment, needs to give 'im some soup." She rolls up her skirt and jumps from the rotten stair straight into the mud. Hard to say if it's going to make her clothes look any worse. She spita at the ground once again and shouts, "And Eugene, is 'is name! Fitzherbert, after the master, this knave, Fitzherbert Eugene!"
The boy stands like petrified, looking at the wry silhouette receding in happy jumps, almost crazy run. He wants to grab a hem of her skirt and beg to come back with her. But the overjoyed crusty quickly disappears behind the thick wall of milky fog.
He's alone with the gloomy nun. Her face is almost as grey as her habit, stinking with poison for cloth-moths. The last link connecting him with his previous life and what was about to come now, is gone.
Sister Maria Agatha leans over him.
"Welcome to our humble orphanage," she says with her teeth clenched. Individual ingredients of the onion soup she ate for the dinner today are still ready to smell. She ate it today and for the last twenty years.
I tried to add some cockney English, but... uh... If you know how should a bad, dirty peasant woman speak, please, let me know. Anyway, she won't appear in next parts.
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