Longest chapter yet! As always, a thousand thanks to my lovely reviewers. I apologize for the delay, and hope you enjoy this chapter. This one in particular is one of the biggest reasons why this story is rated T.

I claim no ownership of the novel or movie on which this is based.


Foundling Child

by Renarde Rouge

Chapter Seven: Les Grandes Douleurs Son Muettes*

"It wasn't open, but somehow you let yourself in

Closed off and broken, I never wanted to go there again

I wasn't waiting, but you came at just the right time

Weary and wasted, I never knew I could feel so alive"

— "7 Keys", Aqualung

Gabriel can't decide who is the bigger idiot: his sister, for falling head-over-heels for the ugliest man in Paris, or Quasimodo, for not falling for her.

Any fool can see it. He's not yet twelve years old, and even he can see that Marie is hopelessly in love with the unfortunate-looking young man. She stares at him with a sickeningly goofy, adoring look plastered on her face, and she can't focus on a single blasted thing. She can barely make it across the barnyard without tripping over her own feet. Granted, she has always been a little odd — she takes after their uncle that way — but this is on a whole other level of strangeness altogether.

He knows he shouldn't surprised; Marie always did insist on being different from other girls. But that never seemed to matter. As distasteful as it is for Gabriel to contemplate, he's well aware that his sister is quite pretty, in a simple, unaffected sort of way. She could have all the older boys in the village eating out of the palm of her hand if she wanted to, and probably some of the men, as well. Why did she have to pick Quasimodo?

It's not that Gabriel doesn't like him, or doesn't think he is good enough for Marie. It's true that he was somewhat uneasy around him at first, but that was before he realized that appearance has no bearing on character, and that Quasimodo was actually a very nice person. Being far too young when his parents died, Gabriel has no idea what their feelings on the subject would be, but he suspects that if they had any control over whom their daughter was going to marry, they would want someone who would treat her with kindness. Someone who would listen to her, and respect her feelings. Someone exactly like Quasimodo.

But Quasimodo himself? That's another matter.

Even at his young age, Gabriel has learned that the blindest people are the ones who only see what they want to see. People want Quasimodo to be a hideous demon from Hell, because that's more exciting than a poor, disfigured orphan. And so that's precisely what they see when they look at him. They don't want to believe that there might be a gentle, sensitive soul inside that misshapen form, because they don't want to be wrong.

And if Quasimodo and Marie ever did get married, people would forget that his sister has always been a good, moral, upright person, without a single stain on her character. They would see a madwoman... or worse, a witch, wed to the Devil himself. Why do people have to be so stupid?

At the moment, however, that possibility is appearing less and less likely. Quasimodo may be very nice, but apparently, he's dumb as a rock.

Anyone else would have noticed Marie's odd behavior long ago, but the boy doesn't have the first clue. Even Gabriel, whose stomach turns at the very thought of romance, realized over a month ago what all those lovesick sighs signified. If Quasimodo hasn't figured it out by now, he may never see the light.

Who knows? He may just think she has bats in her belfry.

Still, he's not sure which is worse: the potential suffering she might endure from the scorn of the townspeople, or the suffering she is currently enduring in silence as a result of her unrequited feelings. As annoying and bossy she can be, Gabriel doesn't like to see his sister in pain.

He might possibly just have to take matters into his own hands.

Speaking of hands, his own are freezing at the moment. After Marie showed him the swing Quasimodo made, he immediately decided that they should build a tree house as well. But it's been slow going; the farm is a busy place at this time of year, and there are always chores to be done, in addition to all of the preparations which need to be made for the coming of winter. Free time is a precious commodity, and by the time Gabriel has attended to all of his other responsibilities, he's usually too tired to do anything else.

It's nearly finished, though. They've all been working on it, off and on, for nearly a month, with the exception of Bernard, who said he'd break his neck if he tried climbing a tree at his age. Thanks to the enormous size of the old oak's canopy and the wide spread of its branches, they were able to build the house large enough to easily accommodate three people. Like the farmhouse, the walls are half-timbred, with mud-and-straw plaster between the beams, and two little windows.

All that is left is to complete the thatched roof, which is the focus of Gabriel's current occupation. There is a decided chill, and as he blows on his hands to warm them, he can see his own breath billowing into the air like the smoke of a contented dragon. Neat.

"Be careful!" Marie calls up to him for about the hundredth time today.

He rolls his eyes and ignores her. As if he would intentionally not be careful.

Down on the ground, Marie has set a basket of bread, cheese, and fruit out, in case "her boys", as she calls Gabriel and Quasimodo, should get hungry while they're working. As she sits in the swing, darning a pair of Gabriel's hose, she hums a little chanson under her breath, apparently oblivious to the straw that is falling into her hair from above.

A few branches away, Quasimodo likewise is occupied in finishing the roof of the tree house. Now and then, however, he keeps stealing little glances at something over Gabriel's shoulder. Curious, he twists around to see what has captured the young man's attention.

And then he shivers. Montfaucon.

At this height, it's hard to forget that that disquieting structure, all alone on that hill and surrounded by a constant cloud of crows, is only a thousand feet from the Paris walls, and only a few hundred yards from the edge of La Courtille. Gabriel swallows, remembering his last visit to the gibbet. He'd been such a coward. Sure, he had been brave enough to walk right up to it; he'd almost managed to reach out and touch it. But at the first hint of danger, he'd bolted like a hare. If he hadn't encountered Marie, he would have just kept running.

Pathetic.

"I hate that place," he mutters under his breath.

Quasimodo looks at him, puzzled. "What?" His hearing isn't what you would call acute.

He jerks his chin in the direction of the gibbet. "Montfaucon. I hate it. Why did they have to build it right there, where everyone has to look at it? For that matter, why'd they have to build it at all?" He shakes his head. "It's disgusting. Whose idea was it to string the dead up like a bunch of skinned rabbits, anyway?"

"I don't know," Quasimodo says in a low voice, his eyes far away.

For a long moment, neither of them speak, each afraid to say what they're thinking. Finally Gabriel sighs. "If Laurent and his stupid brother and his stupid friend hadn't dared me, I never would've gone up there. I just had to prove to them that I wasn't afraid. But I really was." He swallows and looks down, picking at his fingernails. "And when I heard you, I just... took off running. If Marie hadn't been there, if she... hadn't been brave enough to go inside..." He falls silent, too ashamed to finish.

"But if you hadn't gone there with the other boys," Quasimodo replies quietly, "Marie would never have come looking for you."

The boy shrugs, unconvinced. "I guess..."

There is another long silence, and this time, Quasimodo is the one to break it. "I'm glad you were there, Gabe," he says kindly.

Gabriel looks up at him sharply, and immediately he has to look away — not because Quasimodo is ugly, but because the sincere gratitude in his face is too much to bear.

"Yeah, me too," he says with some difficulty. He clears his throat and adds, as an afterthought, "So is Marie."

Quasimodo looks down at the girl, still humming away to herself, and smiles faintly. "Marie is far too good to me."

Gee, I wonder why, Gabriel thinks, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. And then suddenly he can't help blurting it out. "You do know why, don't you?"

"Why what?"

"Why she's so nice to you, why her face turns red whenever you talk to her. Why she's become a hopeless basketcase. Haven't you ever wondered why?"

The young man frowns at him, confused. "I... I don't understand what you mean."

Gabriel throws up his hands in frustration. "Don't you get it?" he exclaims. Or rather, he is about to exclaim, when the act of raising his hands causes him to overbalance. He starts to pinwheel his arms in panic, trying desperately to stay upright.

For a moment he thinks he might succeed. And then he feels himself falling through the air.

He reaches out blindly, trying to grab anything to halt or slow his descent. He feels a sharp pain in his left elbow as it collides with a tree branch. In some distant part of his brain, he is aware that his sister is screaming, but he can't tell where it is coming from. He can't even tell which way is up.

And then, strangely, he is not falling anymore. Slowly, he forces his eyes to open — he didn't even realize they were closed — and he finds himself hanging in the air about a dozen feet from the ground, his leg held securely in an iron-like grip. He strains to look up, and sees Quasimodo looking back down at him.

"Are you all right?" he asks anxiously.

"Wow, you're fast," Gabriel says breathlessly, the blood rushing swiftly to his head.

After helping him right himself, Quasimodo carefully lowers him to the ground, where he collapses onto the grass, still light-headed. Instantly Marie is there, hugging and scolding and pressing kisses into his messy dark hair. When she finally releases him, he sees a small red smear where his head was resting against her apron.

"Hey, I'm bleeding," he says in surprise.

"It's just a scratch," she assures him, dabbing gently at his forehead with a handkerchief. "Thank God that's the worst of your injuries." She lifts the handkerchief up to her eyes. "Thank God for Quasimodo."

The young man shrugs awkwardly. "It was nothing," he says shyly.

Marie gapes openly at him. "Nothing?" she repeats in disbelief. "Gabe could've died. You saved his life, Quasi. That's not nothing, that's... that's everything."

He blushes and looks down at his hands. "I couldn't just let him fall," he murmurs.

As Gabriel watches, Marie's lower lip begins to tremble. Here it comes, he thinks.

"Oh, Quasi," she exclaims brokenly, throwing her arms around him.

Not surprisingly, Quasimodo freezes like a startled deer, but he doesn't pull away. With an expression of the utmost shock, he stares at the girl, her tear-streaked face pressing into the fabric of his tunic, before something — finally! — seems to click in his brain. Slowly, he wraps his huge arms around her and draws her close, holding her gently and whispering inaudibly into her thick auburn hair. Her arms tighten their grip around his crooked back, and in response, his eyes slip shut in pure, unadulterated bliss.

Despite the bruise on his arm, the cut on his forehead, and the revolting sight in front of him, Gabriel smiles. Not exactly the method he would have preferred to attain these results, he has to admit.

But close enough.


Marie can't sleep.

She can't help it. Every time she closes her eyes, she sees Gabriel falling. She knows the actual incident could not have lasted more than a couple of seconds, but to her, it was an eternity. She had plenty of time to think about what she would do if, on reaching the ground, he did not get up again. What she would do if she lost, in addition to both her parents, her only brother as well. Whether she would ever recover from it, or whether she would simply go mad.

And then, as she replays it in her mind, she sees Quasimodo swooping in at the last second and saving him — a guardian angel in disguise. Her dear, humble, precious Quasimodo. And here she didn't think she could possibly love him more.

As she stares up at the vaulted ceiling of her attic room, an involuntary shiver sweeps through her as she recalls the way it felt when he held her. Anyone else, no doubt, would have been terrified to find themselves at the mercy of those shockingly powerful arms; the man could easily break someone's spine if he had a mind to do so. But Marie was in heaven. She'll never forget the warmth and safety she felt in his embrace, or the words of comfort he whispered so tenderly in her ear.

"I promise, as long as I am alive, I'll never let anything happen to Gabe. Or to you."

At that moment, it almost seemed like... No. She dares not think it. It couldn't be true.

Like he cared for her.

She turns over abruptly on her bed and hits the pillow with her fist. This is ridiculous. Why can't she just ask him? What's stopping her? How strange would it really be, anyway? She would be putting her heart on the line, and risking his rejection, but at least she would know. Anything has to be better than not knowing.

Suddenly she realizes that she will not be able to rest until she does.

Muttering a very unladylike curse under her breath, Marie swings her legs over the side of the bed and stands up, shivering in her chemise. Retrieving her heavy cloak from the back of the chair, she wraps it tightly around her. As an afterthought, she grabs the candle holder from the table. She starts to pull on her shoes, but decides that they would make too much noise. Trying not to dwell on the incredible stupidity of what she is about to do, she lets down the trap door as quietly as she can and descends the ladder into the darkness below.

She tiptoes down the narrow stairs in her stockinged feet and maneuvers her way through the kitchen, mostly by memory. Feeling her way over to the hearth, she finds the tongs and lights the candle with one of the faintly glowing embers. Shielding the light from the candle with her hand, she steals out the door and into the barnyard. The night is clear and cloudless, and the light from the moon and stars outlines everything in silver. Taking a deep breath, she marches straight toward the barn.

In the barn, the sheep turn and stare at her sleepily, and André's ears twitch in annoyance at being woken, but her presence attracts no other attention. Odd.

"Quasi?" she whispers, then remembers he can't hear very well. She calls to him again, a bit louder.

Still no answer.

Frowning, she sets the candle holder carefully on a stool and climbs the ladder to the hayloft. The wood is rough and splintered, and she feels a sudden sharp pain as a sliver enters the ball of her left foot. Biting her lip to keep from crying out, she forces herself to climb the rest of the way up.

The loft is empty.

For a brief, terror-filled moment, Marie fears the worst. But no, Quasimodo can't have gone forever. His spare sets of clothes are still here, and he clearly has been working on his model of the farm very recently; the brushes and pots of paint are still spread out on the table. He didn't even take his candle. Wincing from the pain in her foot, she limps over and bends down to feel his straw-filled mattress. Still warm. She must have just missed him.

But where is he?

After lingering for a moment over the warmth created by her beloved's body and thinking several things she probably shouldn't be thinking, she turns and climbs back down the ladder.

As she steps back outside, she stands there in the barnyard, blocking the candle from the wind with her hand and wondering what she should do. But then, out of the corner of her eye, she catches sight of the old oak, with its unfinished tree house, its silhouette black against the deep cobalt blue of the night sky.

It's worth a shot.

Cringing with every step, she makes her way across the orchard. As she walks, the dew from the grass seeps through her stockings, making her shiver. Finally, when she feels she can't endure another step, she comes to a halt under the oak tree and cranes her neck upward.

"Quasimodo?" she calls, her voice much shakier than she would like. "Are you up there?"

She hears a small gasp from somewhere above her, and her heart leaps at the sound. There is a creak of floorboards, and then his head appears in the small doorway, his eyes wide in surprise. "Marie? What are you doing out here?"

Freezing to death, she thinks, her teeth chattering. "Couldn't sleep," she replies, trying to balance her weight on her uninjured foot. "I came to the barn to see if you were awake, but you weren't there. I was worried." Oh, and I love you more than anything. But that's pretty much it.

"I couldn't sleep, either," he says pensively, unaware of her cold and discomfort. "I tried working on my models, but I couldn't focus. It was like my mind was trying to tell me something, but I couldn't understand what it was saying." He sighs, as if dissatisfied with his own explanation. "So I came out here. For some reason, the farther I am from the ground, the better I feel."

Marie smiles despite herself. "If I could, I would build you a castle in the sky," she says fondly. He lowers his gaze predictably in embarrassment. She gathers her nerve, and asks, "May I come up, or would you rather I left you alone?"

"Oh, no, please, don't go," he says hastily. "I would be glad of your company, as always."

Relieved and terrified all at once, Marie hobbles over and passes the candle holder up to him. "Why are you limping?" he asks in concern.

She tries to pull herself up the ladder, which is nothing more than a few boards nailed to the tree's trunk. "I have a splinter in my foot. Although it feels more like a rafter. I'm afraid to find out."

"I'll take a look at it." He takes her hands in his and, with seemingly no effort at all, pulls her up the rest of the way into the tree house.

As she sits beside him in the little room, Marie's heart begins to pound in her ears, and her stomach feels like it wants to do cartwheels straight up her throat and out of her mouth. So this is it. She's really going to go through with it. Once she tells him, there's no taking it back. It's all or nothing.

God help me, she thinks, biting her lip.

"May I talk to you about something?" she asks, her breath short.

"Of course." Quasimodo clears his throat. "I, um... I'll need to see your foot," he says diffidently.

There is a short, awkward silence, during which Marie tries desperately to figure out what he's talking about. "Oh, right," she blurts.

Fumbling with her left stocking, she rolls it off her leg and lays it flat on the floor so it will dry more quickly. As casually as she is able, she stretches her bare foot toward him. After a brief hesitation, Quasimodo takes it and places it gingerly in his lap. She is dimly aware that beneath her cloak, she is dressed in only her chemise, and that this is the first time any man, outside of her immediate family, has ever seen this much of her bare leg. But for the immediate present, all she can focus on is the feeling of his large, rough hands on her skin.

"You should've taken it out right away," he says at length, his voice gently reproving. "With all that walking, you've managed to drive it in pretty deep. This is going to hurt."

"It already hurts. Just get it over with."

Holding her foot steady in one hand, he pinches the wood sliver between his fingers and pulls it out with a sudden motion. Marie can't quite hold back a yelp of pain. "I'm sorry," he murmurs, noticing her strained expression. As his thumb brushes soothingly over the sensitive skin on the top of her foot, she barely manages to keep from whimpering, and not from pain.

"May I use your stocking to bandage it?" he asks solicitously.

She nods silently, hoping he'll assume the redness of her cheeks are a result of the autumn cold.

As Quasimodo carefully wraps her foot, he begins talking in his quiet voice, as if trying to distract her from his task. "I used to get splinters all the time when I was very young, usually in my hands. I had to learn to take them out myself, because my master was always busy, and the sisters at the Hôtel-Dieu were afraid of me. I'll never forget the first time I left the cathedral. I was six years old, and I'd gotten some very painful rope burns on my hands from trying to ring the bells. Even at that age, I was fascinated by them." He smiles faintly at the memory.

"I couldn't ask my master for help, because he was visiting his little brother Jehan, who stayed with the miller's family at his fief." Is it her imagination, or does she detect a note of anger in his usually mild voice? "I knew that the hospital wasn't far away, so I decided to go there for help. I had to wait until after nightfall, because I didn't want to frighten anyone. I put on a cloak and ran across the Parvis as quickly as I could. But the moment I stepped inside the hospital, I was surrounded by screaming nuns, who rushed at me and threw me outside again." He shakes his head, almost in self-reproof. "I don't know why I was surprised. I guess I thought the sisters would be kind to me."

This is the first story Marie has ever heard of Quasimodo's childhood. If this one incident is any indicator, he must have been the loneliest boy in the world. Quickly, she brushes away a tear that has found its way to her cheek.

"Anyway," he resumes with a light shrug, "my hands healed on their own, and they toughened up eventually. I doubt any splinters could get past these calluses now," he adds with a self-deprecating chuckle, turning his rough palms up to show her.

Without hesitation, Marie reaches out and takes them in hers. "I like your hands," she says, her voice thick with emotion.

He raises his gaze to hers. In the candlelight, his disfigured features are thrown into sharp relief, but she doesn't find him ugly in the slightest. A loving eye is all the charm needed.

"Oh, Mariette," he says, and her heart thrills at the nickname. But to her disappointment, he pulls his hands out of her grasp and turns his head away in shame. "You wouldn't like them at all if you knew what they had done. You would hate them." He swallows. "You'd hate me."

"Nonsense," she tells him firmly. "You saved Gabriel's life, Quasi. I'll never forget that. And neither should you."

He shakes his head wordlessly, covering his face with his hands. There is a long silence, broken by a shuddering sob. "I couldn't save her," he chokes out at last.

Her inhibitions and her sense of propriety entirely overpowered by her sympathy and her need to comfort him, Marie moves in close, her leg still draped awkwardly across his lap as she puts a hand on his massive shoulder. "Poor boy," she murmurs consolingly, lifting her other hand to smooth his hair. "You really loved her, didn't you?"

His next words are like a knife in her heart:

"I'll always love her."


Quasimodo feels Marie pull slowly away, her arms falling limply at her sides. In the intensity of his anguish, he doesn't notice the blank despair in her own face, or the tears of heartbreak in her green eyes.

She passes a hand quickly across her face and clears her throat. "What was her name?" she asks, her voice tight.

He sighs, and his gaze drifts out the window, in the direction of Montfaucon. "Esmeralda."

And the mere act of uttering that one name brings it all back: the memories, the emotions... the pain. The unbearable pain he had managed to bury when he was accepted into the Lefévre family comes rushing back to him, like a flash flood. Marie is at his side, urging him to tell her. Almost against his own volition, he begins to speak.

He tells her everything.

He tells her of his master, Dom Claude Frollo, and how he became obsessed with a young gypsy dancer. How he ordered Quasimodo to abduct her, and how in his devotion to the only father he had ever known, he obeyed without question. He tells her of his arrest, and of the trial, and of the punishment to which he was sentenced. He tells her of the hour of flogging he underwent in the Place de Grève, and the additional hour of misery and humiliation he suffered at the mercy of the crowd which had gathered — first, merely to watch, and later, to throw stones. He tells her how his master, the archdeacon, for whose sake Quasimodo suffered gladly, had caught sight of him, chained to the pillory, and turned abruptly in the opposite direction.

And how the little gypsy girl, accompanied by her white goat, had climbed the pillory in front of everyone and given him a drink of water.

He tells her of the strange, wonderful sensation he felt whenever he watched her dancing in the square from the heights of his belltower, and how he soon came to the realization that it could only be love. And, with a sense of dread, that he was not her only admirer.

He tells her how Frollo had the gypsy girl framed for murder, and how he watched with growing desperation as her executors brought her to Notre-Dame for her final confession. How he climbed silently down the façade of the cathedral, completely unnoticed by the crowd. And how he rescued her from her captors and brought her into the safety of the church, to the cheering and adulation of thousands.

He tells her how he cared for and protected Esmeralda from that day on, giving up his own food and bedding for her. How he brought her little things to lift her spirits — a vase of flowers or a cage of birds — and how she repaid his kindnesses with looks of terror and revulsion. How he saved her from the feverish advances of his master, who was determined to either claim her or kill her. And how he fought off an army of Truands, unaware that they were coming to save her before sanctuary could be lifted... and, he later learned, to relieve the church of its treasures.

He tells her of the cold, consuming rage which coursed through his veins as he caught sight of Jehan Frollo, his master's precious brother, as he breached the gallery of the cathedral — a drunken, womanizing profligate of whom the archdeacon was inordinately fond, while Quasimodo, despite his lifelong faithfulness, never received one word of praise or approval. He tells her how Jehan calmly raised his crossbow and shot an arrow straight into his arm, and how even as he grabbed him and peeled the armor from his skinny body, the boy laughed mockingly into his face. And how, with a sort of dim awareness, as if he were watching himself from very far away, he picked Jehan up by his feet and dropped him over the balustrade.

He tells her how, during the assault on Notre-Dame, Esmeralda somehow vanished from under his very nose, and how by the time he noticed her missing, it was too late. How he searched the cathedral high and low, over a hundred times, shouting until his voice was gone. How he suddenly saw Frollo, ascending the staircase of the north tower, and silently followed him. How he watched with mounting unease as the archdeacon came to a halt before the stone parapet, his gaze fixed on something in the distance. How his heart sickened when he saw what had captured his master's attention.

And how he wept when he watched his beloved gypsy girl die.

He tells her how his grief and despair turned into fury as Frollo began to laugh maniacally, insanely, revelling in the dying girl's last twitches. How he rushed at the archdeacon and pushed him over the side of the parapet, where, after clutching desperately for a moment to one of the stone gargoyles, he lost his grip and fell.

And he tells her how, after following the executioners' assistants as they carted Esmeralda's body outside the Paris walls to the gibbet of Montfaucon, he wrenched open the door to the crypt and lay down beside her, holding her to his chest and telling her over and over how sorry he was that he had failed her.

And how, just as he had resigned himself to die, a hand touched him on his shoulder, and a voice told him to hold on.

And when he stops speaking, the strangest thing happens. He suddenly feels better. Lighter. Cleaner. Like an enormous burden has been lifted from him.

Then he looks over at Marie, and is alarmed to see that she is crying.

"Oh, no," he says miserably, realizing by now that she must surely hate him, after all she has learned. "Oh, little Marie, please don't cry—"

Without warning, she throws herself into his arms, knocking the wind out of him.

Stunned into immobility, Quasimodo simply stares as, for the second time that day, the girl weeps into his shoulder, her small hands clutching at his tunic. "You won't go back to that horrible place, will you?" she says, her voice muffled. "Promise me you won't."

Amazed but extraordinarily touched, he draws his arms around her. "I promise," he murmurs.

Marie buries her face in his neck, and he shivers as he feels her warm breath on his skin. Before he is even aware of what he is doing, he pulls her close, until she is for all intents and purposes sitting in his lap. Her small body settles against him, and her hair smells of rosemary and lavender. He finds himself inhaling deeply, needing more of that heady scent. His hands which, entirely of their own free will, have been gently stroking her back, now sink themselves into her wild, bronze-colored hair.

Good God.

Finally, her sobs die away, and she pulls back with a sheepish expression on her tear-stained face. "I'm sorry," she says, wiping at her eyes. At some point in their embrace, her cloak fell away, revealing the thin chemise underneath. The collar has slipped off her left shoulder, and he can't stop staring at the smooth, freckled skin.

Quasimodo shakes his head quickly, ashamed at his inexcusable behavior. "No, I'm sorry, Marie. I... I shouldn't have told you all that."

"I'm glad you did. And now that I know, it doesn't change my opinion of you. I still think you're a wonderful person, and I hope you never doubt that."

His chest constricts at her words. His face feels hot, his breath is short, and abruptly he is aware of how very, very alone they are.

Turning away, he busies himself with fixing the bandage on Marie's foot, which has come untied. He clears his throat. "What was it you were going to tell me?" he asks evenly.

The girl stiffens. "Oh. Um... It's nothing. At least, I... I don't think I should..." She swallows. "It can wait," she ends weakly.

He frowns. "Are you sure?"

She nods, her eyes fixed on her lap. "Yes. I'm sure." Suddenly she looks up with a smile. "Anyway, thank you for helping me with my foot. But I really should be getting back to bed."

"Then let me carry you. You'll need to stay off that foot for a while."

Her smile falters a bit. "All right," she says shakily.

After blowing out the candle — his hyperacute night vision has no need of it — he lifts the girl onto his shoulder as if she weighed no more than a feather pillow and easily climbs down from the tree house. On the ground, he adjusts his hold on her, with one arm under her knees and the other around her back. The walk back to the farmhouse is made in silence, Quasimodo looking straight ahead while trying to ignore the sensations caused by Marie's arms around his neck.

At the door of the cottage, he pauses. Noticing his hesitation, she says, "I can make it the rest of the way on my own."

He eyes her dubiously. "Are you sure about that?"

"Don't worry. I'll be fine."

Reluctantly, he sets her down, and receives another shock when she leans in and kisses him on the cheek. "Good night, dearest Quasimodo."

He swallows hard. "Good night, Mariette."

With a small smile, she turns and disappears inside the house. For a moment, he can't remember how his legs work.

When he finally returns to his hayloft, he lies down on his straw mattress. But he can't sleep.

He can't help it. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees Marie. He can't seem to get her out of his head. Marie's long, thick hair, the color of autumn, of bronze bells. Marie's clear, grayish-green eyes. Marie's adorable freckles. Marie's lovely smooth shoulders.

Marie's warmth. Marie's scent. Marie sitting in his lap.

Marie's lips on his cheek, dangerously close to the corner of his mouth.

Quasimodo groans.

"Not again," he whispers.


About time, Quasi. :P

Wow, this was long. Seriously long. But I enjoyed writing it, as hard as it was. By the way, I hate Jehan. Let's just get that out of the way. In this girl's opinion, he deserved what he got... as gruesome as it was. O_o Anyway, tell me what you thought of my latest chapter, won't you?

R.R.

P.S. Also, I borrowed a line from Jane Eyre. See if you can spot it. :)

*"To Suffer in Silence" (lit. "Great Sorrow Is Often Silent")