A/N: As Promised I'm back :) And I would like to propose/promise that I will try to update once everyweek. So please, feel free to come and yell at me if I fail in this promise. Hope you enjoy.
Chapter Three
"Philippe, please," Madeline swept the chain back to allow herself room to move – her voice was a call of desperation, "Just go there's nothing you can do – just go before –"
The boy stood in the doorway refusing to move, or allow Madeline to close the door.
"Madeline, why do you…" he stared in horrified silence at the metal trapping the girl to the house, "How could –"
Madeline looked over her shoulder. Her father had been well into his drinking that morning, but she was sure that he wasn't so far gone that all this commotion wouldn't attract his attention.
She didn't need anymore trouble.
Pleading with her eyes she turned back to the handsome young man with the long brown hair, "Philippe, please just go, there's nothing you could – my father—"
"Did he do this to you?" both his voice and expression darkened.
Madeline's worry subsided for a moment, long enough for her to roll her eyes and ask, "Who else?" in a bitter and sarcastic tone.
The days of forced confinement had been slowly pushing down on the girl's naturally optimistic disposition; she now often found herself struggling to find a positive outlook.
"This is wrong! He can't do this!"
`Madeline shook her head at his naivety. Philippe may have been given the best education money could buy, but when it came to the real world he knew nothing.
The world didn't run on right and wrong; it ran on money and influence.
Madeline had none, so everyone would and will just turn the eyes away.
"He can and he did," Madeline informed him tiredly. Her voice soft and sad she continued, "There's nothing you can do for me; really I'm fine so would you please just—"
Her voice slowly died off as she heard a door open and close down the hall; heavy stumbling footsteps followed.
Panic started bubbling from her stomach; panic not only for herself but for Philippe. If her father found him here, things would not only be bad for her, but for him as well.
"Philippe! Please!" her voice squeaked with fear making it loose the authoritative tone she had been going for," I must ask you- really this is for your own—"
Again she tried to close the door and again he stopped her.
"Madeline, I really must protest."
With a strangled cry of frustration born from her father's drunken footsteps baring down on them she placed both her hands on his shoulders and shoved.
With a look of surprise he stumbled back off the doorstep and onto the sagging porch.
"I'm sorry Philippe but really this is for your own good," her voice had taken on a dark determined tone; one that was close enough to angry that she felt sure she would push him away, "there is nothing you can do for me - There's nothing anyone can do; You being here will not only hurt me more, but hurt you too, so please just go."
With that she slammed the door in his shocked frozen face.
Sagging against the door she only had a few moments of relief before her father was upon her.
"What was that?" his words were clipped and suspicious.
"Nothing, Papa, merely a sale's man – trying to sell me some new fangily cleaning thing." Her tone was suddenly soft and complacent.
"Took a long time."
"Well, you now how sale's people can be – wouldn't take no for an answer."
There was a tense pause and Madeline stared to nervously rub her arm.
Would her father believer her? He had to. What other proof did he have?
"I'm hungry." He nodded at her before turning back to the sitting room.
Relief at being believed rushed through her. It was so great that she forgot her usual frustration at being ordered about so ungracefully.
She merely curtsied at her father's retreating form, "Coming right up, Papa."
Philippe blinked at the door,
She had pushed him!
He didn't think he had ever been pushed in his life, and defiantly not by a girl.
Children when he had been growing up had always been too scared of his family name to do much more than sneer at him.
Certainly never push him!
He walked down the porch in a daze. He was sure that there was something more important he should be dwelling on but he couldn't get past that last act. It was as if his stumble had somehow jumbled up his brain.
"Philippe!"
He turned towards the voice and was surprised to see his friend there; he had forgotten all about Sam.
"Sam…" the word came out almost as a question.
Looking concerned Sam approached his friend slowly, "Are you alright? What happened?"
"She-she," still in a daze Philippe fumbled for words, "She pushed me!"
Sam stared at his friend for a moment, his face blank and expressionless before breaking into a sudden fit of laughter.
Philippe glared at him, "It's not funny." His town was defensive and a little petulant.
"Come on you have to admit, it's a little funny," Sam argued when his laughing subsided enough to allow words.
Philippe continued to glare at him for a moment before cracking the tiniest of smiles, "Maybe just a little bit."
The two boys were quiet. Sam stared up at the large haunting building, while Philippe stared at him.
His brain was still fuzzy, and yet he could think of no reason for it to be. There was something big he was missing; something large and important that he somehow managed to miss place in the short time.
But what?
Madeline
"So," Sam's slow cautious voice finally broke the silence, "what did you do? I know you're a prick but to get shoved? By a girl?"
Philippe who did not appreciate teasing in his best moods, glared at him, "I was trying to… she didn't want me to…." Slowly a cold sickly feeling of horror slipped down his spine and settled in his stomach. He remembered what he had forgotten. "Her father chained her to the wall."
"Excuse me?" Sam chocked over the words, whirling his head around to stare at his friend in horrified wonder.
Philippe, however, missed this look because he was once again looking at the house.
"She had a chain, metal, around her ankle that was connected to this pole thing along the bottom of the wall – I guess so she could move around," his tone was soft, flat, and expressionless. It was detached as if he had nothing to do with any of this.
"Why that's just… barbaric," Sam was appalled; he had started out with a more realistic view of the De Rocha household than his friend had, but even this was too much for him to believe, "What did you do?"
"Nothing."
"What do you mean—?" Sam implored starting to sound both shocked and angry.
"I tried," Philippe cut him off and continued in his emotionless drone, "I tried to do… something, but she wouldn't let me; she said there was nothing I or anybody could do, and then she pushed me and closed the door."
The two boys feel into a somber silence.
Both being from well-off families, neither had ever faced anything like this nor truly believed such things happened.
For in their worlds it didn't.
Both were trying to grasp their new discovery in their own ways.
Sam, always the more rational-headed of the two broke the silence first.
"I guess… you know… she's right—there's really nothing we can do about it."
His town was soft, hesitant and downtrodden.
Philippe, however, was still incredulous.
He turned towards his friend with a savage expression, "Excuse me!" His voice echoed around them.
"Well…" Sam started hesitantly, suddenly unsure of his friend, "he is her father; he has rights over her – no one else is even really sure she's still in there. He can do whatever he pleases and no one really has the power to stop him."
"And that makes it right!" Philippe implored. His voice still reverberated off everything in sight as each word seemed to come out louder than the next, "You said yourself it's barbaric!"
Sam looked down at his feet, ashamed but unwilling to back down, "No it's not right but…" he shrugged helplessly, "it's the way things are. What are we, or anyone else for that matter, to do?"
Philippe shook his head in disgust, "I can't believe I'm hearing this from you! I knew that you liked all your high snobbery and nobility, but I didn't think you would stoop this low!"
Sam flinched back as if slapped. Philippe's thoughtless word, born from anger, had hurt the other boy more than a slap could have.
"There's nothing we can do!" Sam's voice rose with exasperation. He had no idea how to make his friend see, "There's nothing anyone can do! It's just the way things are. You need to get your head out of the clouds and see that!"
"She's just an innocent girl!"
Philippe glared at Sam while he looked back with an equally determined stare.
They remained in a stalemate for seconds that felt more like decades as all the words that had been said, all the accusations that had been made, hung around them making the air feel heavy with the burden.
Without a warning, Philippe turned abruptly and started down the street.
Surprised, Sam yelled out with genuine curiosity, "Where are you going?"
"You're wrong, Philippe flung at him with more determination than Sam had ever remembered seeing him use before, "I am going to change this."
"Phil, you can't! This it just—"
"To hell with 'I can't'! You're wrong. I am going to stop him," he stopped and looked at the house; his voice dropped and softened becoming no more than a whisper, "I'm going to stop him; I'm going to change this."
A/N: So that was Chapter three. I hope you enjoyed, and please review; I really love to hear what you think. What you liked didn't like etc. Constructive critism is wanted :)
