A/N: Trigger warning for reference to serious wounds, though they are not described in graphic detail, as well as reference to surgery and blood transfusions.

Also, I experimented a little in this chapter by mixing in past tense. I'm not certain if it works or not, but please do let me know what you think of it.

Because the history of medicine is very much My Thing, I did geek out a bit in this chapter. All I ask is that you indulge me. And possibly forgive me.

There is something tremendously soothing about just sitting, and listening to him breathe. In. And out. And in. And out. And in. And out. Over and over, softly repetitious. A repetition that it would be impossible to ever grow tired of.

Dupuis frowns slightly, and shifts in his sleep, and Marguerite wonders if, distantly, he might be aware of what has happened to him, might know that he has lost his leg. Nobody has told him, yet, decided that the shock of that news could wait until he is stronger, when finding out is less likely to make his condition worse.

His fingers twitch between her own, and she squeezes them gently. Matron told her to sleep, told her to rest, but how can she rest now? How can she sleep when the image plays before her again and again of Konstin gasping for breath, those too-fast, shallow gasps as if he were racing for breath?

She swallows and tries to push the memory away, concentrates on Dupuis and his still face. Dupuis does not gasp. Dupuis' breaths come easy, soft, and she can close her eyes and listen to them, just listen to them, and pretend, for a little while, that all is well.

When he was lucid, a little while ago, she told him about Konstin. Not about how badly he is wounded, only that he has been found and is in getting looked after. And Dupuis smiled at her, or, his lips twitched as if he would smile, if he were stronger, and such a look of relief passed over his face Marguerite's heart fluttered to see it.

For a moment, in spite of his wounds and his weakness, he was almost handsome.

But rest. Matron ordered her to rest, as they carried Konstin away. And Marguerite almost laughed in her face, but nobody would have said anything if she had. They would have merely called her hysterical, and chalked it down to her "great emotional distress" and blood loss.

They tried to stop her donating. Oh, they tried. They insisted that it was a man's duty, that a woman had no place doing such a thing, only an orderly could, someone who never knew Antoine, someone who does not quite literally share blood with him. And she looked the surgeon, Lefevre, dead in the eye with the glare her mother taught her and all the sternness she could summon, and told Lefevre that if he wanted a man to donate blood to her brother then he may as well go to the Adriatic and find Guillaume on whatever ship he happens to be on, because he is not going to get a closer blood match anywhere else.

(Lefevre, of course, does not need to know that Guillaume is currently on his way to Paris for his furlough. It would have weakened her argument. Though somehow she suspects it was more Matron's look of she is not going to settle unless you let her donate than any defiance on her own part that convinced Lefevre to give in.)

Her arm still stings from the needle that pierced her skin, but Antoine got all the blood that he needed and that is what matters.

She will have to tell him, when he has recovered from his surgery, that he owes her his life now. It will amuse him, for a little while, until he asks about Konstin.

Konstin. Her thoughts keep circling back to him. There was no time for the agglutination tests before his transfusion. He simply needed blood too badly for that, and the first fit orderly, Anatole, was pulled aside. Anatole is a seasoned donor, suitable for so many of the men, but the very first ounce of his blood that entered Konstin's bloodstream caused a reaction in thirty seconds, those shallow gasps that she can still hear no matter how she tries to attune herself to Dupuis' breathing. And sweat broke out on Konstin's skin, and when Lefevre checked his good eye the pupil had dilated so much that almost no iris was visible.

(It was Minette who confessed that bit to her.)

Marguerite could not bear to watch, and she focused her gaze on Antoine's face, Antoine's pale face which did not react as her blood entered his body, and as the Matron drew another ounce of blood from her, she listened as they requisitioned an oxygen tank and Lefevre fiddled with it until Konstin's breathing eased.

Anatole was pushed away and another donor found. And then, then there was no rejection.

Lying there half-sedated, Antoine could never have known what had happened. And that is one secret which Marguerite will keep from him forever. One of so many, now.

She is not quite convinced that this is real. That any of this is real. The war is real. Enough men, enough boys, have died beneath her hands for her to know that. But this, today. Antoine and Konstin being brought in as if they were just the same as anyone else. Just another two bodies torn and broken, another two officers, barely named. Not her brother, not her cousin, but faceless casualties. And as she watched them carry Konstin out for x-rays, watched Lefevre palpate Antoine's stomach, watched Amélie and Minette and the others hang fluids and check pulses and place hot water bottles, she felt as if she had fallen into a parallel world, as if the Earth itself tilted the moment Dupuis asked, faintly, if there was any news of Daaé. How can it be real? How can any of it be real?

Perhaps she accidentally dosed herself with morphine, and is dreaming all of this. And she'll wake to Amélie admonishing her, and a letter from Antoine telling her he is on furlough, and a telegram from Konstin enquiring after his wounded men, and find that Dupuis never existed, that none of this had ever really happened at all.

A dream. Just a dream.

The dull throb in her arm, and the warmth of Dupuis' hand in hers, tell her that she is deluding herself. None of this has ever been a dream.

"Konstin! Where—where's Konstin?" Antoine's eyes were wide as they searched her face, his breaths coming in short gasps, fingers groping at her sleeve.

She pressed a finger to his lips in the effort to shush him, but he jerked his head away from her touch, tears glistening in his eyes. "Is he—is he—"

"Sssshhhh. Sssshhhh. He's alive. I really don't know how he is. The surgeon is with him." The latter bit was true. Lefevre was indeed with him, examining every inch of him and Matron was removing what pieces of shrapnel she could, but Marguerite knew perfectly well how he was. She interrogated Minette who carried him back from the x-rays, but she was not going to tell Antoine that.

But Marguerite has never been able to lie to her brother, and even with morphine under his skin and flowing through his blood he was able to see right through her.

"You're lying," he hissed, and her chest tightened at his words. But she could not very well tell him the truth, she could not! It would worry him, make him worse! And he needed to be kept quiet to have any chance of being strong enough for surgery.

But she could tell him a little bit. Just a little bit.

She sighed, and tightened her grip on Antoine's fingers. "Matron is taking shrapnel out of his chest." At her words Antoine sucked in a breath, his eyes widening, and she rushed to reassure him before he could interrupt her. "It's not in very deep! Some of it is between his ribs, lodged in the cartilage, and in his breastbone. It hasn't gone through to his heart or his lungs. There's really nothing to worry about." From that, she thought, but did not add.

His eyes searched hers, but instead of pressing for more details, he merely nodded. "And…and his face? His head?" Some of the strain had drained from his voice, and Marguerite strove to keep her own voice low to soothe him.

"There is no damage to his skull. Only some lacerations, nothing too serious." She would not mention the broken knee, or the shrapnel in Konstin's thigh and hip, or the hairline fracture in his other hip, or his stomach wound, or his arm, or the shrapnel in his eye. No. She would not mention any of that. Not unless Antoine asked her directly about it, when she would have no other choice but to be honest with him.

Possibly he dis not even know about those other injuries, because his eyes slipped closed and he sighed. "That's good. You—you will stay…with him, won't you? When—when they take me away? I—I would not like…him to be alone."

She nodded, though he could not see her, and stroked a lock of hair back from his forehead. "Of course I will. Of course."

The Lieutenant who was in the bed beside Dupuis is gone. He died sometime while Marguerite was sitting with Konstin. She cannot say she is surprised. The damage to his lungs was simply too great, and he was fortunate to survive surgery. Dupuis does not mention him, does not say much of anything, only regards her hand wrapped around his own with heavy-lidded eyes.

He stays quiet even as the Matron measures his pulse, and his blood pressure, and administers a dose of atropine to help his heart. She does not comment on Marguerite being with him, on her not being in bed as she was instructed, and says, simply, "Your brother is out of surgery. It went well."

Marguerite does not ask about Konstin, deciding that if there were news then Matron would tell her, and nods. Matron moves on to the other Capitaine, the one who lost both legs, and Dupuis raises his eyes to meet Marguerite's own.

"Your brother?" His voice is faint, so faint she has to lean in closer to hear him.

"He came in a little while ago. Gut shot." The simplest way of putting it though, as she knows now from Carrière who took charge of him from Lefevre, the majority of the damage is to the omentum, sparing the abdominal organs.

Thank God for small mercies.

"I'm…sorry." Dupuis swallows, and then, a beat later, "I hope—I hope he makes it."

True to her word, as soon as they carried Antoine out for surgery Marguerite settled in beside Konstin. He had not woken of his own accord. Not with the transfusions, and not with the fluids, and not with the washing or the hot water bottles, or the picking out of shrapnel. Lefevre woke him twice, to be certain he had not slipped into a coma, and by all accounts he was lucid and able to answer the perfunctory questions, though he fumbled when it came to what had happened to him.

"To be expected with such a concussion," Lefevre shrugged, and made a note, and Konstin dozed off again.

They put a patch over his left eye, to shield it from the light. One of the first things Lefevre did after the x-ray was to remove the piece of shrapnel lodged in it. His eyes—for something to have happened to his eyes—Marguerite clenched her teeth tight to quell the roiling nausea in her stomach.

Her hands lay in her lap, worrying her handkerchief. The sight of him so wounded, so, so badly broken with so many bandages wrapped around him made her fear that to touch him at all makes might only hurt him more, might only inflict more pain. The fingers of his left hand were poking out from beneath the bandaged splint holding his wrist together, and her own fingers ached to brush over them so that he could know he was not alone, but touching him seemed like such a crime, and her words all caught in her throat. And all she could do was sit, and listen to Lefevre and Mabeuf as they discussed him in hushed undertones.

Mabeuf wanted to operate, to remove the shrapnel from Konstin's abdomen and his hip and his thighs. Lefevre was caught between removing the shrapnel, and removing his left leg, and Marguerite burned to scream at him, to scream that he cannot take Konstin's leg, but all that came out though her clenched teeth was a whimper, and she tightened her fingers in her tangled handkerchief.

The surgeons decided, after measuring his pulse and his blood pressure, and frowning and prodding and listening to his lungs and his stomach, that he was not strong enough for surgery then , possibly not strong enough to endure an amputation at all, and though it felt like it should be a reprieve it did not loosen the bands of iron around Marguerite's chest that made it so hard for her to breathe.

(That still make it so hard for her to breathe)

They moved on, to a sous-lieutenant who has lost part of his jaw in a shell-blast and whose whole face was bandaged, and she was left to sit there, alone beside her unconscious cousin who isn't really her cousin, not by blood, but dammit his mother is married to her uncle and he was like a third brother to her when she was a little girl and that makes him her cousin, and anyone who so much as dares to tell her to leave his side could just go to hell.

(No one told her that. No one else here, in this hospital, knows the complexity of her relationship to him other than Antoine and Amélie, and Antoine doesn't care, and Amélie understands.)

Her eyes fell to the white metal capsule resting on Konstin's chest from the gold chain around his neck, and the wedding ring resting beside it hanging from a matching chain. Where Konstin, a man who has always refused to court any woman, found a wedding ring, Marguerite could not fathom, and it puzzled her. If he had a sweetheart hidden somewhere they would surely know, and he could never have gotten secretly married. Though Konstin can be very secretive, having a secret wife is too dramatic, too like something in an opera, even for him.

So where did he get a wedding ring?

And the thought came to her, sitting there, as she watched the shining gold band rise and fall in time with his breathing, that perhaps it was his father's. His father's ring, worn into battle to keep him safe, like some sort of a talisman. Tears prickled her eyes at the thought, (prickle her eyes now again at the memory of the thought), and she could see him as if she were there, as if it were a memory and not something she imagined, Konstin sitting by a fire and turning that ring in his hand, lost in thought the way he used to be with his pocket watch, and a new ache throbbed dully in her heart, thinking of him longing for his father, the father he never knew.

The ring from his father, and the Saint Anthony in its metal capsule from his mother.

Marguerite's hand raised of its own volition and reached down her uniform to pull out her own Saint Anthony in its little capsule, the one Christine hung around her neck before she left for this hospital. "I know you will be nursing," she said, her voice hoarse and the faintest glimmer of a tear in her eye, "but nurses need protecting too." And Marguerite's mother swallowed when she saw it, and pressed a new set of dark blue rosary beads into her hand.

(The rosary beads live beneath her pillow, and she holds them each night, and aches to be home, aches for her mother to cradle her close and for the war to be over.)

She sat there for what feels like hours beside Konstin, but can only be one at most, her mind numb and fear bubbling nebulously, watching each minute shift of his face, twitch of his fingers, the way his uncovered eyelid fluttered as if it might open, as if he might be hovering just beneath the surface of consciousness. She clasped her Saint Anthony tight, felt the cold metal nestled against her palm.

Her thoughts returned, over and over, to Antoine, lying in surgery. Matron forbade her from following him in, from sitting and watching as Carrière cut him open to find the bullet lodged somewhere within him. And she ached to be there, ached to be close to him, and to talk to him though with the pull of the gas he would not be able to hear her, and promise him that he would be all right, promise that he would be safe, and well soon enough, promise that he was not alone with strangers. But to see it, to see the glint of Carrière's scalpel dulled with her brother's blood, to see that same blood trickle and run down Antoine's pale skin, to listen to the instructions of suction and suture and the call for a pulse check… Her stomach churned. She could picture it, could see it perfectly, the whole scene of him lying there, has seen it already with so many others, but for it to be her brother's pulse beneath her fingers—It was all she could do not to vomit.

How have they gotten here? How have they gotten to where she is the one who must assure her older brother that he will be well, the same older brother that used to take her into his arms when she was a little girl and had nightmares? Even when Guillaume first went to the sea, Antoine was still there, always ready to protect her from imaginary monsters, and he would tell her stories, stories of the adventures that he and Konstin planned to go on, the places they would visit and things they would see. His stories would ease her to sleep, and she would dream that she was on those adventures with them, through mountains and deserts and the snow of the northland. And she would wake, still nestled in his arms, and find him asleep, and drift back into peaceful dreams listening to his soft breathing.

She was ten when he went to Persia. It was never the same without him, and he was never quite the same when he came back. He was always a little more anxious, a little more troubled, a little more prone to getting lost in thought.

And Konstin came back sadder, with that haunted look in his eyes that only deepened when the war came. And there was nothing that Marguerite could do for either of them, but they were always still there for her.

It was the soft hand of the curé that tore her from her thoughts, from her memories of her childhood. He squeezed her shoulder, and nodded at her, not speaking a word, not acknowledging what he must surely have known, that there is her cousin lying before him and in surgery was her brother. He merely nodded, then crossed over and sat down by Konstin's other side, and lay down his Bible, withdrawing his little case from his pocket. The case with the oils and the holy water, that Marguerite has seen so many times, and her vision swam, bile rising in her throat.

Not that case, not that Latin, not—not Konstin. Oh, God not Konstin.

She couldn't take in the words she couldn't, not when they were being said for Konstin. She could only watch as the curé dipped his finger into the oil, and made the sign of the cross on Konstin's forehead, and over his heart. He murmured the Latin softly, blessed each of his wounds, and the tears she had held in for so long, ever since Dupuis asked for Konstin and she realised he was missing, trickled down her cheeks, blurred her vision, and it was only dimly that she saw the curé gently open Konstin's mouth and lay the Eucharist on his tongue. She gasps, pain lancing through her heart, and closed her eyes tight, unable to bear the sight a moment longer, every fibre of her burning to push the curé away, to push him away and tell him that there is no need to give Konstin Extreme Unction, no need because he is not dying he's not, and as soon as Carrière or Lefevre or Mabeuf or any of them get him into surgery he will be fine, he will, he has to be, she will not allow him to die. She promised Antoine that she would stay with him and that he would live and be well, and she will not let him make her break her word to her brother, she will not.

In spite of herself, in spite of her fear that she could hurt him, the fear that she would only bring him more pain, she reached out and curled her fingers around Konstin's, and squeezed them gently. He did not stir, not twitch, and his fingers were so cold, and when the curé fell silent, and squeezed her shoulder again before moving on to tend to someone else, she at last found words to speak, in the first prayer that came to her.

"Salve Regina, mater misericordiae…"

Please, God, let him live.

If she could be as numb as Dupuis, now, it might be a relief. To not have to think, to not have to wonder, to not have to worry. To have morphine flowing through her blood, dulling every sense, every thought, so all she can do is lie there, and exist, blissfully unaware.

Dupuis is sleeping peacefully, more peacefully than he has in hours. It will be another while before he wakes, and longer after that before he looks for her or asks after Konstin. She gives his hand one last squeeze, and sets it down gently beside him, tucking the blankets tighter around him to keep him warm. It would not do to let him get cold now.

In the end, the surgeons decided that they could wait no longer to operate on Konstin, that surgery was the only option. She is not certain how much they will be able to do, how much he is strong enough to endure, but they will not take his leg. They would have to take too much of it, and he is certainly not strong enough for that. They will simply have to do what they can.

She is relieved she is not in there, to see him laid out beneath their knives. And she is too tired, now, to even picture it.

She should send a telegram to Christine, to tell her that he has been found and save her from worrying any longer. But she cannot bear to send her a telegram now. What if he dies in surgery, simply stops breathing like the young lieutenant did? What could they do, only try to stimulate him to draw breath? Rub his breastbone and breathe for him themselves in the hope he might start breathing himself. And what if his heart stopped then, unable to bear the strain any more, what then? Only prop his legs up to get blood back to his heart, and shoot him up with adrenaline, and hope. And hoping never works, not in cases like that.

And in the meantime, while they would be fighting to bring him back, Christine would be sitting back in Paris, relieved that her son is alive, is definitely alive because she, Marguerite, has seen him, has sat with him. Only for another telegram to come then and say, sorry, no, he died.

No. No it is best to wait until he is out of surgery, and avoid such a nightmare happening.

(There are so many things that could happen afterwards, so many complications. But no, no, she will not entertain such a possibility. He will survive the surgery and he will be fine, be fine, just fine.)

And her mother. She will have to wire her mother about Antoine. But it is unfair to wire her mother and not wire Christine, and for now, while her mother thinks Antoine is well, is it not best to leave her thinking that? At least for a little longer, before Marguerite brings that worry down on her?

It is best to wait before she wires either of them, and then wire them at the same time. For now, she can go and sit with Antoine, and wait for him to wake, and be ready to assure him that Konstin is still living.

And with one last brush of her fingers over Dupuis' hand, she stands and walks away.

A/N: As ever, please leave a review. If this is not the longest chapter I've ever written for a fic, it is certainly up there, and I am (mostly) happy with it, so please do let me know what you think!

Up Next: Christine receives a telegram, Raoul fears the worst, and Marguerite is anxious for three men.