Title: Inversus
Author: Still Waters
Fandom: Versailles
Disclaimer: Not mine. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.
Summary: Claudine always knew that Fabien had a heart. After his death, she finds it. On the wrong side of his body.
Notes: There is a scene in Season 2, episode 4, where Fabien is stabbed and Claudine tells him that either his heart is not where it's supposed to be, or he doesn't have one. As soon as I saw that scene, I had the idea for this piece. There is a rare medical condition called "situs inversus" where the internal organs are flipped and found on the opposite side of the body (such as the heart being on the right side, instead of the left side). This is a brief chance to play with that idea without focusing on the variations of the condition and the timeline of its actual discovery. The italicized lines of dialogue quoted from the episode do not belong to me. Thank you for reading.
In the end, Fabien Marchal left his body to science. To Claudine.
Before he died, he told her that she could do as she willed. Bury him to serve her grief, should she grieve him (of course she did), or study him to serve her learning.
It took Claudine three days. Three days of packing snow around Fabien's body as she struggled with how to best honor what he had offered. Three days before she picked up the blade to make the first cut, accompanied by the past echoes of a hand fisted in the back of her shirt, pulling her close as she had peeled back the bloody linen over the left side of his chest.
Will I live?
You're a very lucky man. Either your heart is not where it's supposed to be, or else you don't have one.
Let us hope it's the former.
Claudine had pushed him back down onto the table after that, stopping him from going right back to work. She stopped the bleeding, dressed the wound, and barely noticed the brief thrill in her previous words, the exciting promise of a question without an answer, something new to consider, or even to discover. She had forgotten all about it.
Until now.
She cut through the chest wall, broke past the ribs, and stopped. There it was, that whisper of excitement, the thrill of discovery. Hands slick and cramping, she looked again and laughed.
Fabien's hope was realized. It was the former. For there was his heart, on the right side of his chest. Not where it was supposed to be.
She tested the Latin description of what lay in front of her: situs inversus viscerum. Inverted position of the internal organs.
After hours of notes, sketches, laughter, and tears, Claudine closed the incisions as best she could, laid a hand on the right side of Fabien's chest, and thanked him.
He had served the king. He had served her. And now he would serve the medical world.