30 May 2020
Prompt: Bleeding Out
Character/Pairing: Xavier-Yves Roth
Rating: K+ / PG / Most Ages
Notes: DLM AU. I've been wanting to do XY's death, but honestly I'm not the biggest XY fan and was having trouble with it. (Look for two updates today & tomorrow. I was good on my schedule, and then we had some home/repair issues that wiped me out and I completely forgot about updating. Sorry, y'all!)
Robert Roth was…not the most pleasant man to be the acquaintance of. He was loud, quarrelsome, boisterous, and more than a bit of a drunkard. He had his hands in the pockets of pretty much every name in town, or maybe it was he had every name in his pockets. Mr. Roth was one of those new money types, you see, that was so distasteful to all the old money that came before. What was worse was that no one seemed to know where his money came from, anyway, which made his sudden presence among the old money crowds of the Parisian scene that much more jarring. He walked with the confidence and swagger of a man who owned the town while the town was secretly wishing he would just walk out.
What was even worse was his son, Xavier-Yves. Sorry. XY. Xavier hated his name about as much as he hated his father, which was somewhat ironic considering how similar the two were. If there had been any good in the obnoxious blond youth it had been stamped out by time and abuse many years ago. XY carried his own sort of swagger, one born of presumed privilege and too many boxed ears behind the closed doors of home. If he was loud and mean to everyone he came across, it was only because his father was loud and mean to him, and his mother was too blitzed out on her vapors to care.
"We own this world now, Xavier," Mr. Roth had told him once, back when they were new to Paris and Xavier-Yves was still young. "Remember that. And if anyone tries to make you forget it, crush them like the bugs they are."
Robert Roth had no use for weakness in his new world.
Unfortunately, for all his bluster, Xavier-Yves was nothing but weak.
Oh, he played a good game at it, though. He saw the way his father carried himself and tried his best to imitate the swagger. Perhaps that's what got him, in the end.
One shouted insult too many. One more drunken brawl in a back alley establishment his father frequented but would kill him for attending if he knew. A few more shots, the liquor more intoxicating and more illegal than the wine his father preferred, and a few more ounces of inebriated courage to see him through. One word in one wrong ear. One flash of coin in the wrong eye.
Paris was a dangerous place in those days, and Xavier looked much the same as any worthless drunk wandering the streets. When the more respectable citizens heard the moaning coming from the bags piled in the alley, it was only natural they assumed one of their lesser counterparts had drunk himself stupid again. No one got close enough to see the knife wounds, and no one could smell the sick of death over the stench of cheap booze and rotting garbage.
Because that was where they left him to bleed out, in the end. In the garbage.
Because that's what the Roths were, to them. Garbage.