Title: The Creation and Development of the Friends of the ABC: Chapter 2/~15

Author: flyery

Rating: PG-13 (May go to R in later chapters)

Pairing: implied House/Wilson/Chase, RLP+Chase, RLP+House, RLP+Wilson

Summary: AU. It was a chance meeting for a boy of only ten years of age but it, and the subsequent encounters would inspire him years later as he was writing the most famous novel of his career.

Warning/ Historical Note: (potential spoilers) This AU is set during the French Revolution and the period just after it which means it will stretch from the mid-1700's to the mid-1800's. I am aware that there are many different interpretations of the personalities that animated that time-period. Mine may very well be different than yours. House's character Gregoire Coste is based on the real life physician Jean-Francois Coste who really did hold some of the positions I have given to Gregoire Coste. However, I have not used all the information that I found and I doubt that anything like this happened. There is no evidence that Victor Hugo was inspired by anything other than history, but this plot bunny has attacked me so I follow its will. Any questions about the historical aspect can be asked and I'll do my best to give answers or link sites.

Disclaimer: I make no claim to own the copyright for House, M.D. Also, for Victor's mother's speech, those views are not necessarily mine or the truth. But his mother was in real life very pro-royalist and that is how I have tried to portray her.

"I'm gonna base this moment on who I'm stuck in a room with. It's what life is. It's a series of rooms. And who we get stuck in those rooms with adds up to what our lives are." - Eve: One Day, One Room

*****

Chapter 2: Shadows and Their Effects (Age 10)

Though House had suggested it, and he really had to stop calling him that even though Gregoire Coste in his mind looked different than the one he had met, the one who was House, Victor never did tell his friends all about who he had met. Instead, the three men continued to fascinate him. He would go back to the garden and looked over the fence, hoping to find them in their seats, at their table, but without fail, all that was left was three empty glasses. He could not help it that as he went anywhere and everywhere, he would look for them. It was an obsession.

He wasn't ever sure what he would do if he found them, whether he would have the courage to approach them. He hoped he would. But they'd seemed to inhabit a world of the likes of which he'd never seen. There'd been this feeling when he was around them like there was something monumental that was in the making. It wasn't as if they were creating plans for a new world, but they'd somehow achieved something between them that he was unable to describe. It had been his private utopia, even if he'd been teased and they'd snipped at each other. It felt, in this moment utterly unattainable, the way the best foods were after the first bite when he'd want more, but know that he'd never reach that pinnacle again. Even if he knew that though, it didn't stop him from wanting to see them again.

He was walking down the street one morning, one his way to school when he saw, in the corner of his eye, a flash of gold. He turned quickly, ready to call out to Chase. His mouth was already forming the words when he saw the person he had mistaken for Chase. Immediately, the child felt ashamed. The person was female, though she was one of those women who worked and so had pulled her hair back. The child imagined Chase in school, being teased for being looking, what? For having a face that leaned towards beautiful rather than handsome? But Chase had such a presence, there was no way he could have been teased. Still ashamed, the child continued down the street.

Incidents like that kept repeating themselves: he'd think he'd seen one of them but he was always mistaken. No matter where he looked, they were never there. Briefly, he considered asking someone for one of their addresses, but that felt wrong, like some kind of violation of them, of their privacy. He continued to jump at long blond hair, or at blue eyes or at a kind smile. The world seemed to mock him with its constant reminders.

*****

Not seeing them, only seeing false doubles was what first put the fear into him. He began to worry that he wouldn't recognize them, that their faces would somehow be confused in his mind after a time. Walking beside the Seine, he was struck by an idea. The artists there, some of them drew. He thought that maybe he could draw them and that then he'd always have an idea of how they looked, a reference. He begged his mother for charcoal the next day.

At first, everything looked wrong, he couldn't get his hand to work right. But slowly, his lines got better and he was able to draw the simple things around his bedroom. When he drew a bee that was recognizable, he felt ready to try to draw them.

It was harder then he'd expected to draw humans. Without a reference, their faces ended up lopsided, the eyes too far apart and the nose too close to one side of the face. Their images, though clear in his mind refused to be transfered onto the paper. But achieving their faces was quickly becoming an obsession. His hands became covered in charcoal and he developed a hacking cough that wouldn't go away. His mother had come into his room once, hoping to catch him there, intrigued by his change in attitude, his need to know new things and had seen him sitting at his desk, surrounded by curled balls of paper. She caught the beginnings of his current work, thick brown hair, before it was bunched up and thrown in among the others. She retrieved it and unrolled before asking, "Victor, would you be so kind as to try drawing me?"

He was surprised, she'd never asked him to do anything of the sort, but he applied himself, reveling in her attention.

"I'd love to, Maman."

He tried to go slower than he had in the first pictures, she was there, her image wasn't likely to slip out of his mind if he wasn't quick. Slowly, the charcoal was transfered to paper. Slowly the lines built up. The proportions were wrong and the outlines were not always clean, but his mother felt a sense of pride looking at her son. It was better than anything she could have drawn. The next day she took him to the Gardens. He doesn't look over the fence once.

He resisted temptation and the seemingly inevitable disappointment only that one time. Every other one, his head would pop up again, he'd look for their faces on the streets, he'd search for them.

It was his need to find them again that started the problems. Whenever he heard any names similar to theirs, his ears would pop up. So it was no wonder that suddenly, he started to hear rumors about House, Chase and Wilson.

It was in fact, he tried to convince himself, his fault, the first time he heard them. But suddenly it was as though that was all people talked about, because it was all he heard. But while he heard many things that he did not understand but knew better than to ask about, he never heard a word about where they were. It was although they had disappeared from the face of the world, leaving only impressions behind. Only ghosts which mocked him with glasses and names and glimses. It was for him one of the Circles of Hell.

It seemed that what House had told him was true, if rumors could be believed Chase really was filled to the brim with blue blood. Before everything, if history lessons were remembered correctly, he would have been respected, even though he held no great estates. Now, he was mocked and scorned. Victor had lists of how Chase had worked his way into House's good graces, and they ranged from blackmail to some contorted positions. Before the start of this, he'd been, he liked to think, innocent, but having his ears open had brought to him an overwhelming swell of information and none of it lead to keeping one's innocence. But even if Chase had been mysterious, he'd looked at House with compassion and trust, he'd been attached to him, too attached to have done any of this. Besides House had compared the young Chase to him and House had seemed to not dislike him too much so that was another point in Chase's favor. Proof that all the gossip could be wrong.

But logic was his only tool, he could combat the voices with nothing else, he couldn't defend those faces in his mind, couldn't prevent their visages from being damaged by the murmurs. It was impossible. He hoped they wouldn't be too upset he'd heard all this when he saw them again. Because on day he would, he had to believe that. When he saw them, he'd feel that feeling again and everything would be right in the world, the ghosts and the voices would be gone.

*****

His mother's sudden affection, sudden presence in his life was surprising, but he couldn't help but feel happiness at the attention she was giving him. It helped protect him from the voices. And if what she was asking was for from him was to be more open to her ideas than to those of his father, it wasn't such a sacrifice, was it? Being open to ideas was good. He was learning lots, though he still wasn't doing well in the history classes.

One day, he was sitting in his room with his window open. The wind was nice, it curled around his neck and hands, cooling them like it was supposed to. He'd just decided to work on those pictures, he hadn't in a while. His cough had remained but the child seldom paid any attention to it. It was in this moment of creation that his mother walked in. She was carrying a heavy book in her hands with a beautiful cover. It read 'The Great Kings of the Realm of France.'

"I've been waiting until you were old enough to show you this," she said and she did so with the greatest reverence.

"The kings were the greatest heroes the world had ever seen, they had been chosen by God. There's this one, this is Louis the XIV, the greatest of them all now. You know of Versailles, don't you, by Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Well, he built it from nothing. Before there was a small castle with vast hunting grounds. But he'd been born there, so even though it was almost nothing, he decided that it was worthy of becoming more. The people had begun to doubt the king because enemies were spreading nasty rumors. Our great monarch was hurt by the things he's heard and that was why he decided to build it."

"Mother, what is blue blood?" It seemed stupid, but he had to know, had to find out how much of all of it was true. He hoped his mother would blame it on curiosity. Maybe she'd even appreciate it.

"It is the blood that nobles have. If they are pure nobles, they will have very blue blood, that means that they have an unbroken line of nobles marrying each other."

"But Mother, say before, a very rich man bought a very great title, but he'd been a bourgeois for as long his family had and then there was another man who lived in small holdings in the country. And that second man had a family genealogy that showed that he'd descended purely from nobles since the reign of Philip Le Bel. Well, which one would be more noble." And maybe, he's trying to protect Chase, trying to see how his life might have been different because even if Chase was immune to all of it now, he couldn't always have been.

She looked at the boy strangely. "The man in the country has far bluer blood, any other noble he met would know who was, who his family was his family and what important deeds they'd done. But the rich bourgeois would have to be given respect because he'd bought that title. He'd be new blood, tainted blood, but rich blood. Perhaps he'd have been invited to parties but unless he was perfect at blending in, he'd have been much more disdained than the other man."

"And after the Bastille?"

"After the Bastille, the rich man would have faced the wrath of the poor, for leaving the Tiers Etat. But they might have still felt that he was one of theirs. But the other man, the true blue blood, might have, if he'd been a country seignior, used his privileges against the peasants and they would have hated him."

"Even if he was just a boy?"

"Well, I suppose that if they'd taken a particular fondness to him, they might have been kind to him. But they were angry, jealous of the nobles and the clergy. Envy is one of the seven sins for a reason. Their envy and treachery is what caused the fall of the monarchy, but soon it will be restored. The famines that have gripped France are God's wrath because we deposed of the king." It's interesting how everything is different depending on who tells it.

She talked in a dreamy sort of voice. It almost reminded the boy of the feelings he'd felt when he was in their company: the potential of dreams, that heading feeling of breaking from the dorm. Perhaps that's why he began to spend more time in his mother, because she was as close to them as he could get. Because she helps keep them alive. Because sometimes, when he closes his eyes he still sees them and that means more than anything to him.

A/N: I'm still looking for a beta if anyone wants the job.