Thank you so much for your enthusiastic reviews. They mean the world to me!
Endless thanks to my beta, WriteOnTime, and to justaskalice, for hand-holding.
Stephenie Meyer owns any Twilight characters that may appear in this story. The remainder is my original work. No copying or reproduction of this work is permitted without my express written authorization.
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Late July, 1942
Dead Christians. Esme's eyes keep flitting around the church, but everywhere she looks there are nothing but dead Christians. Exquisite and mystical in their suffering, broken up into nearly abstract, glowing, colored shapes. Their faces are stretched long with sorrow, their shoulders stooped under the weight of their martyrdom. These pictures in glass have inspired countless generations of Parisians to grind their knees to dust on this stone floor praying for forgiveness and salvation, but today, they only enrage Esme. All that suffering and redemption, so neatly pressed flat and etched into glass. All those pious Christians with their eyes abjectly turned to heaven, awaiting salvation, praying that the hand of God might reach down and lift them out of their misery. The hand of God….
Esme lets out an uncharacteristically unladylike snort of disgust. It echoes faintly in the dusty blue stillness of the church. The sound doesn't reach the pious old women praying up front. It does, however, reach the ears of Mr. Stoker, who is slipping up the aisle behind Esme, as silently as possible. He thinks he can feel her unhappiness from twenty feet away, which is a ridiculous thought, he knows. He doesn't make a sound until he's seated in the pew behind her and to her left, his usual spot. He can tell that she's aware of his presence though, just from the nearly imperceptible shift in her posture.
He clears his throat. This is their signal that they are ready to begin.
Most days Esme starts talking right away, as soon as she knows he's there, almost as if she's been holding in the words for him all week and they won't stay in any longer. Today, though, she keeps her eyes forward and she remains silent.
Finally he starts instead. "Is there anything to tell this week?"
When she answers, her voice is clipped and far away, completely devoid of emotion. "Dekker is a monster. They want to take over the world. They rounded up fifteen thousand Parisians this week and starved them for days before they shipped them out in cattle cars to who knows where. Other than that? No, nothing new."
He says nothing for a long time, and neither does she. But speaking freely for the first time in a week has broken something open in Esme. A crack appears in her carefully fortified wall, and she's now struggling with everything she's got not to break down into wrenching, screaming sobs at all that's happened in the past few days.
He sighs and shifts. Esme swallows hard against the painful lump in her throat and swipes angrily at her eyes. She nearly smudges her eye makeup across the fingertips of her light ivory cotton gloves. With a disgusted sigh, she strips them off and stuffs them in her bag.
"You've heard about Velo d'Hiver, then?" he finally whispers.
Esme lets out one short, sharp laugh, utterly devoid of humor. "Yes. I think it's safe to say that all of Paris heard about Velo d'Hiver. I suppose there's that. No one can deny now what they're up to."
"That's true."
Esme wants to ask him a question, but it breaches their protocol. She's not to ask for information, he's not to give it. It's safer for everyone involved that way. But she can't help it. Trapped as she is in the lair of the Beast itself, she can't get any information at all. At least not that kind of information.
"Do you know where they sent them?"
He says nothing and for a moment she thinks he won't, that he'll keep up this wall of detachment. When he does speak, his voice is lower, perhaps closer, like he's shifted over towards her.
"No. Well, not exactly. But it isn't hard to guess."
"Camps? Like Drancy?"
"Worse than Drancy. Not in France."
Esme squeezes her eyes shut against the bitter knowledge and she's almost sorry she asked. Maybe ignorance was better. No, this understanding of the brutal facts is what keeps her going. But still…at times like this, it threatens to drown her.
"How do you manage?" she whispers.
"Manage?"
"Knowing the truth. How bad it is…how do you keep it from eating you alive?"
"Well, I focus on the work we're doing. I hope that it does some good in some way. And for those I can't save….I hope they find some peace, even if it's not in this world." There's a pause before what comes next, as if he's uncertain if he should say it. When he does, his voice is soft, laced with the compassion she remembers seeing in his face the first day they met. "Perhaps there is some comfort to be found in that thought for you as well."
Esme struggles to restrain her scoff of disbelief, "Are you talking about God?"
"Well, I suppose so, in a way."
"Really? You can sit there and speak of God to me in the face of what has happened here this week?" She can't help it, and she can't restrain herself. She flings a hand at the saints in stained glass all around them. "Where was God when they were locking women and babies in that place for days with no water? Where was God when they packed them onto the trains? Is God taking care of them now? If so, he has a curious way of showing his love, your God."
"I think we mean different things when we speak of God."
"This is not your God?" she points a finger towards the altar of the church.
"I don't think of it quite so literally."
"But you do believe?"
"Yes," he says with absolute conviction.
"But how can you?" Esme breathes. "In the face of everything you've seen, knowing the evil that men are capable of, how can you believe?"
He is quiet for a moment and she hears him shift again. When he speaks, his voice is hushed but urgent. "God is no magician in the sky who comes to cure our ills."
"What, then?"
"Would you believe me if I said that I see the evidence of God in you?"
"Me?"
"Yes, you. You come here every week for the sake of people you will never know, uncertain whether or not what you do will ever be of any aid to them at all. And yet you still do it. You risk your life to do it. That speaks of God to me. Yes, these times we're living in have proved that men are capable of inconceivable evil. But when ordinary people can be moved to do such extraordinary things in the face of that evil, isn't that God, some kind of God, at work in all of us? I have to believe that, or there really would be no point to any of this."
Esme can say nothing. He's broken through her carefully constructed walls and she's weeping silently.
"Please don't cry," he murmurs.
"I don't know if I'm strong enough for this, even with the help of your God," she whispers, giving voice to her darkest fears in this tiny little moment she's carved out with him.
"You are. You've already proven your strength."
"But to keep going…to face them every day…when there is no one I can ever speak the truth to."
"You have me. You can always speak the truth to me."
"Do I have you?"
"Yes, you do."
Never has she wanted so badly to turn and look him in the eye, to reach out and touch him in some way. But they've already crossed far too many lines today, and taken far too many risks.
"You should go," he says softly.
She closes her eyes and nods, swiping her tears away with her handkerchief.
"Will you be alright?"
She nods again, her eyes still closed.
"I'll see you next week," she whispers.
"I...I look forward to it."
Esme stands to leave. She still feels miserably shattered and raw and she reaches one hand out to grip the back of her pew as she begins to move towards the aisle. And that's when she feels it, so soft and fleeting she might have imagined it, except she knows she hasn't. She feels the tips of his fingers ghost across the back of her hand before slipping away as if they were never there.
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January, 1943
He isn't coming. Esme has been sitting in her pew for over an hour so far, and there is no sign of him. Not the tell-tale scuff of his shoes on the flagstones, not the soft clearing of his throat that is now so familiar to her she hears it in her sleep.
She began to worry almost immediately when he didn't materialize behind her shoulder within moments of her settling in her spot, because he always did. Not once in all the long months that they've been meeting this way has he ever been late by even a few minutes. So within ten minutes, Esme knows something is wrong. After sitting frozen in place for over an hour, she is nearly numb with panic.
What should she do? What could she do? They've made no provisions for this, no back-up plan should something go awry. Everything was too dangerous, too risky.
Esme realizes that as close as she feels to him, she knows absolutely nothing about him. He's a handsome, blond Englishman. He comes to the church once a week and listens while she talks. Occasionally, he talks back. He has become the secret center of her world and she knows less about him than she does about the man who comes to clean her chimney. Even if she wanted to make inquiries about him, she can't. He's a cipher.
But he's not and she knows it. She may not know his name, or what he did for a living before all this, or why he is in Paris during the war, but she knows him just the same. She knows him better than she knows anyone on earth, and she feels he knows her just as well. The rest, the details, are superfluous. Except without those details, he's lost to her. Not that she's at liberty to search for him. She can't. She can't breath a word of what's been transpiring in this church to a living soul, not even to try to find him.
In this moment, Esme feels utterly bereft. She knows she cares for him, she knows she depends on him. He has become her rock, her safe harbor in this dark sea. But until this, until she faces the reality of his loss, she hasn't understood how complex and powerful her other feelings for him are.
An hour and a half go by. She outlasts even the pious praying women up front, and still she can't bring herself to leave. She knew from the instant that he was late that he wouldn't come at all, and yet she can't bring herself to give up. She imagines what he would say to her, that she was taking an unnecessary risk lingering so long, and that's what finally drives her to her feet.
She takes her time returning home, almost wandering, although the path between the church and home is so familiar that she could never get lost. Her coat hangs open, but she's senseless to the biting, damp cold. None of it penetrates the wall of panic in her mind.
She's turning onto her street before she's aware of it. She's still moving in a fog, but a familiar voice snaps her back to reality.
"Good afternoon, Madame Benoit."
Gérard.
He still lives with his mother, but much about him has changed. Gone are the dirty clothes and unshaven face. He's always a little sweaty and still fat, but he's got decent clothes and appears passably clean. Esme knows what has affected this change. He's working for the Nazis in secret. He's their lackey and spy. He keeps his beady eyes on the neighborhood, looking for troublemakers, listening for discontented grousing. Worse than the banal tattle-tale nature of that, Esme also suspects that he sniffs out those who may be aiding the Jews. The little bastard listens to the neighborhood gossip, the secrets shared at the market stalls, and he sells his tidbits to the Nazis. Esme thought it was impossible to loathe Gérard any more than she did, but he's surprised her.
For the last several months, since he'd found his supposed calling as a Nazi lapdog and errand boy, he's kept a respectful distance from her. His eyes still glaze with lust when she passes, but he no longer makes inappropriate comments or harasses her.
Esme knows why. He thinks they're on the same side now.
"Gérard," Esme finally responds politely, inclining her head only slightly.
Gérard manages a forced, polite smile.
"How are you today, Madame Benoit?"
"Well, thank you. How is your mother?"
"She's well."
"Give her my best, would you?"
"Of course. Are you heading home to meet your guests then?" Gérard asks, barely concealing his eager desperation. He's practically salivating for a chance to meet General der Infanterie Dekker, to grovel before him and ingratiate himself in that quarter. It's his abject pandering to Hans that keeps him on his best behavior now with Esme.
Because like everyone else in Paris, he thinks Hans is her lover.
Why wouldn't he? All he sees is Hans showing up at her door night after night and staying for hours. She's managed to hold Hans at arms' length so far by summoning the specter of her absentee husband, so their flirtation hasn't gone much farther than that…a flirtation. A few chaste goodnight kisses, a few strokes of his fingers down her bare arm, or across her back. Nothing more than that. But the rest of the world doesn't know that. To them she appears as nothing more or less than General Dekker's mistress.
This thought pains her more than she realized it would. Not Gérard, anything that keeps him away is welcome. But the idea that everyone thinks she's sleeping with Dekker, that she's a collaborator. She thought knowing the truth in her own head would be enough, but the idea that all her old friends, the proud, honest artists of her former circle, would think she was a Nazi officer's mistress… the thought is repulsive. For once, she's glad that no one from the old days has remained in Paris. She couldn't bear to run into someone and see it in their eyes; the judgment, the revulsion.
"Yes," she finally manages. "I have guests coming for dinner. Won't you excuse me?"
"Of course. Enjoy your evening. And your company."
He forces another pained, polite smile which Esme finds it impossible to return. She just turns and continues on to her house.
This is when I need him, she thinks. This unbearable crushing weight, this panic, this shame. If he had been there today, if she had seen him, spoken with him, even for only a few minutes, she could manage it. Without even that small dose of him, this charade feels entirely out of her control, and she feels like she's drowning in it. Without him to remind her of the truth, all she has are the lies.
Another Thursday passes, and he still does not appear. Esme can scarcely function, she's so panicked. She actually pleads illness and sends everyone away for several nights in a row. Hans sends enormous bouquets three times a day while she is "ill". Esme banishes the vile flowers to the unused garret rooms. She can't bear the sight of them.
In a fit of near-madness, she goes to Café Flore one afternoon, thinking to perhaps pull Charlotte aside and bare her soul. Charlotte works for the Resistance. That's how this whole thing started. Maybe she knows him, or could ask around about him. Maybe she can find out where he's gone, what's happened to him.
She gets as far as the sidewalk outside before reason takes hold again, and she stops herself. What would he say? He'd be angry at her for putting herself at risk this way, even for his sake. It's only this, the knowledge that he wouldn't want her to look for him, that keeps her from doing it.
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February, 1943
It's been three weeks. On the walk over to the church, Esme mentally tries to prepare herself for his continued absence. This may be the end, she thinks. Maybe he'll never come back. Maybe he was reassigned; maybe he had to go into hiding…..maybe he was captured. She tries to brace herself for all of these eventualities, and also for the possibility that she may never know what happened to him, but it doesn't work. She can't just let him go. She knows she'll keep coming to this church week after week, hoping against hope that one day he'll just appear over her shoulder like he was never gone.
Esme is blind to all the usual scenes of the church, the praying old women, the pigeons fluttering in the corners, the sad-faced saints gazing down on her. She just enters the dim, quiet nave and crosses to the right aisle as quickly as possible, eyes straight ahead, expression grim. She smoothes her skirt instinctively as she sits, and she's barely begun to tug off her gloves when she hears it.
The scuff of shoes on the flagstones behind her.
Tears spring to her eyes instantly. She has to reach forward and grip the back of the pew in front of her to keep herself from leaping up and turning to confront him. She hangs on, white-knuckled, as she listens to him slide into place behind her.
She doesn't wait for him to settle, or for his clearing of the throat before she leaps in, her voice a frantic hiss.
"Where have you been?"
"I was called out of Paris for a few weeks."
"I see that! Do you have any idea how I've worried?"
"It couldn't be helped. I didn't know I was going until I was nearly leaving," he says. His voice is so tired, more strained than she's ever heard him, "I'm sorry you worried. You shouldn't have."
"I can hardly help it, you know."
"You were never meant to worry," he says softly, his tone sad. "You shouldn't…count on me that way."
Esme can't help it. She breaks protocol. She twists in her pew to face him, gripping the back with one hand. He starts back at her movement, the violation of their established interactions. Impossibly, he looks aged since she last saw him. So tired and worn. She wants to smooth the hair off his face. She wants to take him home and settle him onto the loveseat in her room. She wants to lean him back on the pillows, play records for him, make him a brandy. She wants to care for him until the lines leave his forehead and his eyes lose that dull sheen. But none of that can happen.
"Not count on you?" she can't keep the emotion from her voice. She's a woman who's spent her entire adult life carefully controlling every interaction with the opposite sex. She can play conversations like a symphony. But now she has no control over what comes out. All her fear and anxiety and uncertainty pours out as her eyes fill. "Not count on you? You're all I have! You told me I have you, that I could always speak the truth to you! If you…if you're gone, I have no one, nothing. If you're not here then this lie becomes my whole life!"
His face twists and collapses, his reserved façade crumbling in the face of her tears and passion.
"You do have me. Don't ever think you don't. If I'm not here, just know that I have no choice. I would never willingly leave you here."
"Where were you?" It's nothing more than a hushed whisper. "Just tell me. If I know something, anything, maybe I won't worry so much."
He closes his eyes in exhaustion and defeat. "I'm a doctor," he finally says. "Well, I've trained to be a doctor. I was needed for my abilities in the…" he instinctively stops himself from sharing the specifics, but then on consideration realizes that everything about this has broken the rules meant to keep them safe. Nothing he says now can make it any worse. "I was needed in Burgundy, to tend some injured. Once I made it in, it took some time until I could make it back out undetected. There are people there deep undercover. I couldn't do anything to endanger them. I had to wait to leave until it was safe."
Once he's finished, they're both silent for a long time. Esme considers all he's told her. He's a doctor. He was helping members of the Resistance who were injured and needed him. She can tell from the exhaustion written across his face that it's taken a toll on him. Her desperate need to have him sit in a pew behind her in an empty church every week pales to insignificance beside this.
"I'm sorry," she finally says, twisting back to the front, "I shouldn't have made you explain yourself. You're right, it's a terrible risk. And you don't owe me that."
"I owe you that," he says quietly. "I'll tell you whatever it takes to put your mind at ease, to make this even a little easier for you."
"Just seeing you makes it easier for me," she breathes. "You have no idea…"
"Yes, I do. For me, too."
They sit in silence as the words they've just spoken hang in the air around them. Esme's heart seems to have stopped and every small breath she exhales sounds deafening in the cool quiet of the church. This…this near-declaration…it makes her pulse race and her mind reel. But they can't. This can't happen. These words can't be said. Not here and not now. Aro's words, spoken so long ago, come back to her now. "One should not love in a time of war. It's just asking for heartbreak." She laughed at him that night. He laughed at her, too, when he told her that she'd never be in love.
"A lot has been said while you were away," she finally says, her voice surprisingly steady. She's doing this for both of them, returning them to the safe part of the water, steering them clear of the rocks. "Some of it is useful, I think. Shall I tell you?"
There is a long silence from him before he softly clears his throat. They are back on familiar ground now. "Yes, please. Go ahead. I'm listening."