Summary: Many can hear the beating of the drums, but to each they can play a very different tune. Some have everything, others nothing to lose. What does an ambitious, obsessive man do when his path is crossed by someone who soberly sees the possible consequences of his venture? Enjolras/OC...somewhat. Based on both book and musical.
Author's Note: An OC - I know what most may be thinking, but I promise to bleed my heart out before letting her become a Mary-Sue. Rating is for future chapters.
Author's Note #2: The disease described in this chapter is pancreatitis chronica, it was first described by doctor's at the beginning of the 19th century. All content in this chapter concerning it has been written after doing throughout research. The "roundabout" way some might see the way it is written is intended, as at the time the illness was quite new to the world of medicine, leaving physicians with very little to say about it, few knowing how to recognize it properly. I felt that writing about it in a more detailed and scientific way would be out of place considering how much the characters could actually know about it at the time.
Disclaimer: I do not own "Les Miserables".
Thank you very much for the reviews.
III. A march and an escape
Georgine was half way home when it started: a familiar, unwelcome feeling of discomfort under her sternum, at first just a squeezing sensation inside. The girl started hoping it would pass. Sometimes it did, as rarely as that was. She gritted her teeth and started walking faster, as fast as she could without worsening what she was experiencing. Most of the time this prelude's outcome seemed to be a whim of fate.
Then, between one moment and the next, it began. A sudden feeling of what she could describe as a porcupine of rusty, iron nails tearing at her insides, spreading through her entire body. Georgine stiffened, inhaling air sharply, but continued to walk. This was not foreign to her. She knew that at all cost she had to keep walking, get home as fast as she could. What else could she do? Curling up into a ball in the middle of the street was not an option.
The girl tried to steady her breathing, make it as calm as possible. As always, it would make the pain slightly more bearable.
She marched on with determination, one goal set in her mind. Home. With every moment the throbbing inside grew, suffocating every fiber of her. With every step she thought only of finding the strength to take another. In her head it echoed like the even beating of a military march drum 'Just one more, just one more'.
Inside her pockets, Georgine balled her hands into fists, hard enough for her knuckles to whiten and the small veins under her skin to emerge, pulsating. Her nails bit into her flesh, almost drawing blood. The girl however knew by this time how hard she could press them against her palms and not claw herself, but make it hurt enough to minimally distract her mind from the tearing sensation in her abdomen.
The color from her face had drained, a shadow of ordeal painting itself in her eyes. Yet her features seemed to remain frozen blank. She had learned to hold that face no matter how awful she would feel. As bad as it hurt, the idea of showing it in public was worse. She did not want the world to see her condition. Now, to everyone that she had passed, she looked just like anyone else walking ahead of themselves.
Georgine was not far from home anymore, merely a blocks' distance. However, it was that last block that made her destination seem to be worlds away. She pulled her hands out of her pockets and wrapped her arms around her chest. The throbbing in her body became sickening, radiating to her stomach. She started praying in her head not to vomit in the middle the street, the pain attacks in the past causing such a reaction more than a few times.
The front entrance was closer. She did not care anymore if anyone in the house would see her in this attire. The girl knew she could not make the distance around her house to reach the servants' gate and door. She only wanted to get inside and into her room. Upon reaching the estates fence, she began running one of her hands across its iron bars, as if unconsciously following a string.
Making it behind the gate she reached the heavy, carved, oak door of the house and pressed down the knob. It was either out of ignorance or certainty that no one would dare assault the home of the city's chief of police, that the door was never locked. At this point Georgine was thankful for that. She did not know if she would have managed the wait between knocking and someone answering. She slid inside, shutting the door behind herself and began walking to the grand staircase.
Misfortune herself had seemed to wish upon Monsieur Laurent to appear in that very moment. He emerged from one of the corridors leading away from the hall deeper inside the house. It had been truly extraordinary for him to be at home in the early afternoon.
He saw his daughter enter the hall, immediately noticing the clothes she was wearing, a look of utter surprise spreading across his features.
"Gigi? What on earth are you wearing?!" The elder man asked in a loud voice that echoed through the large, marble covered hall.
"Not now, father." Words muffled by gritted teeth were all the answer he received as his daughter rather quickly ascended the stairs and disappeared on the first floor. He sighed, understanding the situation. The moment he heard her voice, he knew. After all this time he had become sensitive like a piano tuning-fork to any signs of this. Monsieur Laurent was also aware, that in the circumstances, it was best to leave the girl alone. He would not, however, forget to later inquire about the ridiculous attire he had just witnessed her wearing.
Georgine finally reached her room, closing the door behind herself. She threw off her coat and frantically began unbuttoning her dress, the quite tight fabric seeming to suffocate her like a steel corset. When she undid just enough buttons to slip out of the frock, she tugged it off, remaining in only a loose shift. The throbbing in her abdomen was near the brink of what she could bare. The girl took her boots off and simply kicked the tangled pile of clothing under her bed. She slid under the covers, pulling them above her head, curling up into a ball in the middle of the mattress on her left side. The position proved to be the best for these moments, relief appearing to come sooner than in other ones.
She wanted the pain to just stop, trying in her mind to escape from it, somewhere far away. With the linen blanket covering her eyes from the light it was easier. The daylight was no longer distracting, mercilessly reminding of the current reality and sensations she experienced.
The spirited, outspoken girl was now reduced to a pitiful, little, curled up lump of pain under the bed sheets.
Georgine did not know how much time had passed as she lost all track of it during the attacks. It could have been an hour, it could have been three. At some moments she was not fully conscious. The pain had finally gone. Now she felt cold, like standing in a strong draft. This was an often if not constant aftereffect. The girl did not have the strength to move. She would most likely regain life within the coming hour. She usually did.
After forgetting to take along with him some documents and having to return home to retrieve them, Monsieur Laurent had finally returned to his office at the Palace of Justice. He sat down at his desk and laid a small stack of papers in front of himself. The man could not stop thinking if he should not have stayed home because of the state in which he witnessed his daughter. On the other hand he knew she hardly welcomed company at those times.
The pain attacks had started when Georgine was seventeen. They started suddenly. First everyone thought them to be either caused by food poisoning or some vicious bacteria. As they persisted to return, Monsieur Laurent began summoning and consulting various doctors. By calling in favors, he had even managed to have his daughter examined by the personal physician of Louis Phillip. They all raised their hands in a gesture of surrender.
Taking leave from his position he began traveling with Georgine to every doctor in the country who might have an idea what was the cause of his child's ordeal. Most attacks ended after an hour or two, some lasted over a day. The elder man's heart was being torn apart as he was forced to helplessly watch his only daughter suffer.
Finally Monsieur Laurent was directed to a clinic as they called it, in Prussia, that specialized in diseases of the intestines. There after an examination and countless questions about the recurring condition the girl experienced, a professor Kaufmann had asked to speak to the Frenchman alone in his office.
The conversation was a blur to Laurent. He remembered the Prussian tell him of an organ called the pancreas, about it still being quite a mystery to the medical world. The man spoke of some reports, a description of a disease made in the recent years and all of Georgine's symptoms fitting it. In the end he spoke of observations done on patients thus far diagnosed. At that moment Jacques Laurent's world had truly fallen apart. None of the patients lived above ten years since they started experiencing the returning pain attacks. Physicians had yet a long way to find a treatment. All they could offer now was morphine.
They had called Georgine to the office. Professor Kaufmann upon agreeing on the matter with the girl's father first, repeated all that he had told Monsieur Laurent. The Frenchman sat silently next to his daughter, watching her face change from confusion to fear and then, to a sinking emptiness. She didn't become hysterical, she didn't scream, she didn't cry, she just sat there, squeezing one hand with the other in her lap.
There was nothing they could do but finally return home. On the day they started their journey, he remembered Georgine sitting in the corner of the carriage opposite to him, staring blankly outside the window as they drove. A few silent tears fell down her cheeks. Laurent felt his heart sink but he didn't know whether to react or let her be, he chose the latter. Then she spoke:
"I don't want anyone to know." the girl said quietly, continuing to stare outside the window.
"What?" Georgine looked at her father, he didn't know if there was more sorrow or anger in her at that moment.
"You can tell Margaret, but beside her, I don't want anyone to know." Her words were clear even though coming through gritted teeth. The man simply nodded. "Promise me."
"I promise." Laurent was no perfect man, he had many flaws like any other person, but in that one moment he made a promise he swore to himself to keep no matter at what cost.
They barely talked through the rest of their journey despite its significant length. During the next attack his daughter got, she had taken the morphine professor Kaufmann gave her. After returning to the living after the drugged haze, she had thrown it out the window of the inn they were staying the night in, refusing to take it again. Georgine claimed it made her feel like the dead and for that she would have time. Her father didn't argue.
After many, many days of travel, the two had reached home. It was then that his daughter's antics started, as Laurent called them. They often infuriated him as they were uncalled for in a young woman of her status. Yet, although he tried reasoning, arguing and calling her in line with paternal authority, her behavior continued and he remained passive in action.
Monsieur Laurent expressed his discontent with his daughter's way of conduct, the decay of her manners. He shouted, threatened with consequences. He never made good on any of those threats. The man was devastated and torn inside. One side of him argued with her actions the way any decent father's would. Another side, however, gave silent permission to them, understanding her argument that when most people have decades to live their lives, she didn't have even one left. As a result, he was left with a well-educated by Margaret, overly outspoken daughter who intently chose to act often seemingly thoughtlessly, on a whim.
Because of all of this, for almost three years now the elder man had retreated into burying himself in work. He had been leaving his home early in the morning, returning sometimes in the very late evening. In his duties he found salvation from madness. Monsieur Laurent had already lost his beloved wife prematurely, when twenty years ago she had been giving birth to Georgine. Now he lived with the thought that soon one day, he would lose his only child also.
It was a sunny spring morning. Monsieur Laurent and Georgine sat down to breakfast in the dining-room together, yet neither had really spoken to the other. The air in the room had grown thick throughout the meal; the father poking his fried eggs around the plate with his fork, the daughter lazily running her spoon through her oatmeal. When it seemed they both finally gave up on their food, Laurent broke the silence in the room.
"What were you doing in that ridiculous attire yesterday?" He referred to when the girl returned home on the previous afternoon, wearing a frock and coat that hardly suited a young woman of her status.
"Just out. On a walk." Georgine replied blankly, reaching for her cup of tea. She could hardly tell him where she truly had been.
"But why in that horrid clothing?" He continued to inquire.
"Please, father, it's you who rails on about the commotion on the streets. How they are filled with beggars and thieves." She took a sip of her tea and tried to speak in the most reasonable tone possible. "I think it's sensible to think that I'll be much safer looking like someone not worth the bother to rob rather than parading around in a fancy dress." A logical explanation tended to be the best one to give.
"Hmmm." He took a sip of coffee from a cup standing in front of him. "I suppose that is reasonable." Monsieur Laurent said, nodding his head slightly. With the growing poverty among the citizens, the streets were not exactly the safest of places for a lonely, richly dressed young woman. One could barely walk through them without beggars asking for money, not to mention the flock of degenerates and thieves. The sad truth was that nothing produced such people like difficult times. Of course it wasn't all their own faults, many were just desperate unfortunates forced into that situation. Men were capable to go at any length if their families are starving. The elder man understood that, although he was never forced into such circumstances, yet he knew that when it came to a conflict between protecting loved ones and obeying a dry paragraph, it was the first of those two that would win. However, as much he could sympathize with people not truly guilty of their fates, he had no delusions about the criminal disease gnawing at society's bones. The city was filled with drunks and crooks who were capable of killing for a few sous. He had seen his good share of them through the years of his service.
"And don't worry, no one will judge you by my appearance. I doubt anyone would recognize me. I especially doubt that our acquaintances would even care to look at a girl in that clothing." She stated, looking at her father, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Most of the people they knew batted common-folk away like flies. They would hardly spare a glance towards a woman in the attire she wore yesterday.
"You sometimes scare me with your thinking, Gigi. I occasionally wonder why I can't just have a normal daughter." Georgine raised her eyebrow and Laurent rethought his words. He then smiled and continued. "One who doesn't think, buys dresses, plays the piano, gossips all day and makes ugly, little drawings of flowers in vases." The elder man jested with no malice.
"Because I'm too much like you." She laughed and took another sip of her tea. It was true, they were alike in some parts. Both were certainly stubborn and persistent.
"You're too smart for your own good, you know. No man is going to want you." It was supposed to be a light joke. However, the girl raised her eyebrows, the earlier smile disappearing from her face.
"One did." She said dryly.
"Please, lets not start that subject." He was hardly in a mood to start that discussion. Truth to be told, he would never be in a mood to talk of the subject. The feeling he had about it was comparable to drinking wine and the alcohol turning sour between one sip and the next.
"Fine." A cold, one word answer. Not waiting for a reply, the girl left the dining-room without saying anything else. That chapter of her life was closed, and it had been clear to her for many months now. Still, she truly did not take kindly to her father's attitude on the matter. It was not what he did that angered her, but the satisfaction about it in him. Another spoon of vinegar to swallow, was that in the end he turned out to be right.
Laurent sighed and tapped his fingers on the table top. He wondered why did he even start speaking of something concerning marital relations.
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