A/N- I have no idea what this is supposed to be. While writing Charmer of the Shadows, Azelma went off on a tangent during one chapter, and it interrupted the story so strangely that I had no choice but to remove it and completely rewrite the chapter. Here is the tangent, though, hopefully able to stand on its feet as a oneshot, with a new weird ending that may not match the weird subject matter. I hope you enjoy...?
"Can I tell you something?"
He had not realised how near sleep he had been until her solid voice snapped him into reality.
"I don't suppose you'll care. Hell, you'll probably ignore me as much as you can, but if I keep talking maybe something will stay in your mind. I want to tell this to you, Montparnasse. I want you to hear me.
"When I was little I found a way to keep myself from feeling. You certainly understand why it would be helpful, don't you? I know there have been times when you wanted nothing more than to fight back your humanity. I have heard that you have a real heart somewhere inside, or that you used to. Feeling is inconvenient, isn't it? We had a little servant girl who was very near my age back at the inn, and my mother used to beat her terribly. I remember how badly it upset me to see a woman who held me so tenderly treating a girl my own age like that. I wondered whether the girl's mother would have hurt me the way my mother hurt that child. My mother said that her mother had gone to another city, but I had never seen that city. I couldn't imagine it in my mind. I only knew our inn and the surrounding town. Another town down the road did not make sense to me. Why did the world need another town when it had Montfermeil? And that was when I realised—it didn't exist. Nothing is real.
"And the more I thought about that, the more the rest came together. There was no other town; there was no mother. Then I began to understand that the little girl wasn't real either! Did I have any proof that she had thoughts like me? She only came into existence when I entered the room. The world only existed when I was there.
"I used that idea for years, Montparnasse. I hit the girl the way my mother did. She wasn't a real person; it did not matter. I fought with my sister and brothers. I was not troubled by anything my father did or said to me, because I knew that he was not real.
"It sounds insane, doesn't it? But I lived my life on that belief. It did not bother me that we had to rob the rich, because I was the only person alive, so the money was mine. Once the rich man and his freshly emptied pockets turned the corner, both ceased to exist. I did not need to feel. Lying there now, how do you know that I have a soul—that I exist? Once I leave this loft, will I really go anywhere?
Montparnasse groaned softly. "Who cares where you go, if you'd just shut up once you're there."
"But when I first saw you, Montparnasse," she continued, ignoring his words, "I wanted more than anything for you to be real. I'd never seen anything like you. And then when my sister began to talk about you, it changed everything. She felt for you, and I could not understand it. Whatever was happening to her, it was beautiful. I wanted it. I wanted to feel. I pretended to be her.
"When she stopped talking to you, I hoped that I could begin where she had left off. I began to help my father more, hoping that somewhere our paths would cross. You seemed magical to me, as though you could bring me back to life where I had killed myself, my feelings. I did not flinch when my sister was killed. It was only when I heard that you had been imprisoned that I wept.
"Somehow, when I am with you, I am brought to life again. I cried a moment ago. When we are together at night I have this feeling inside my chest, like I could open up my heart and hold you inside of it forever. The palms of my hands and the soles of my feet tingle when I see you, and when you touch me I feel it with my stomach.
"I know I mean nothing to you. I should have known that you did not even remember being with me. I can smell the wine on your breath when you kiss me. I knew you were drunk the first night I followed you home from the bar. I knew what you used to do there with my sister, and I hear you calling me by her name at night. I don't mind it, Montparnasse. I wanted to be Éponine. I am your Éponine now."
Montparnasse sat up sharply, squinting at the skinny girl seated in the hay. He had been trying to ignore her and regain sleep, but the last bit of her impassioned speech had caught his ear. "What did you say?"
"Éponine did not know what she had in you," said Azelma, getting to her feet and moving toward him. She sat down facing him, crossing her legs, and put a hand out to touch his cheek. "She was silly to chase after that Monsieur Marius for so long. He wasn't real. And to die for him! When she could have had you all along. You are all I have. You are my religion. You are my soul. My conscience. My consciousness. Everything."
Suddenly angry, Montparnasse shoved her away. "None of it is anything! I'm nothing, you're nothing—we're alive and then we burn out and everything goes dark and that's all! There's nothing else. Religion, soul, conscience—it's all idiocy. Everything is idiocy. Take what you can take, experience everything, then, before you know it, that's all. You drop dead atop a pile of riches, and what good is it to anyone? What good is anything to anyone? I roll over twice, and I'll fall off of the loft and I'll die. And where will that leave you? What will happen to all the clothes folded in the corner? If I take the knife from my pocket and thrust it between your bony ribs, the world will be the same piece of shit it was a moment ago. A lot of desperate people with no thought for anything but themselves. I'm through with it all! I've built a name for myself, I had anything, but then your damned sister died, and it all goes on as if nothing happened. Hundreds of people must have died. The piles of corpses... And then the city just walks past."
"Montparnasse," Azelma whispered, leaning closer to him, her soft breath on his face, "how many people have you killed?"
He roughly pushed her away.
"A hypocrite," she chuckled. "My personal saviour, more beautiful and complex than anyone realises, the only person alive who brings me to life, and he allows another view of his own profession to drain the will to live from him."
"I haven't killed so many," retorted Montparnasse, lying down in the straw, turning away from her. His words were muffled.
"And you never realised what one murder could do. One pauper girl dies, and look at you, everything you stood for leaked out. You, Montparnasse, you killed people who mattered. Your victims had families that missed them when they never made it home from the opera, never returned with an armful of groceries. There are orphans in this city that would still have food in their mouths if it weren't for you. There must be at least one person who feels as you do now for every corpse you've left in your wake."
He said nothing, so she continued: "It's easier for me, Montparnasse. That's what I'm telling you. If you and I are the only ones who exist in this world, then what does it matter? You killed a man, turned the corner—how can you prove that his corpse is still there? How can you prove that that corner is there? The wall behind you, I see it, but you do not. Does it exist? For you? Can I prove that it is there?
"That's why you are so miserable now, Montparnasse. The pile of corpses faded from the world as it faded from your sight. The same happened to the people passing by. There is nothing out there," she proclaimed, sweeping her arms around, indicating the entire world in general. "This loft, me and you, this is it. The men you've killed, they have no families. No one wept over their half-rotten corpses until the tears made them sick. No children found themselves turned out of a house that was suddenly empty, forced to find something to eat in the stinking piles of garbage on the street. There are no pretty young girls forced into factories and prostitution because you killed their brothers, husbands, and fathers, their only source of food. Nothing that is not before you now ever was. Your mother, whoever she was, your family, if you had one—my family. My sister. None of it ever happened. It's much better this way. Without your emotions, your silly attachments. Without her." And she paused at last, waiting for his reaction.
Montparnasse lay completely still. Wondering vaguely if he had fallen asleep, Azelma leaned forward. She had not expected his arm to dart forward and his strong, elegant hand to seize her throat. He turned his face toward her, several bits of straw caught in his hair, and watched with a grimace and he tightened his grip, tightened, went red and disappeared.
Without standing, Montparnasse pushed Azelma's body hard. There was a pause, then a heavy thump and crack. He turned his head again, facedown in the hay, but the misery did not come back.
When Azelma was not in the loft, how could he prove she had ever been there?