Émile's voice is soft, his words punctuated by the clicking of Christine's knitting needles, and every word of his about Konstin goes straight to her heart. "He looked as if he'd seen a ghost, Mamma. As soon as I walked in he went white. Not that he wasn't already pale, but what colour he had seemed to disappear." Christine's stomach churns, and the needles fumble. What could Konstin have seen to trouble him about Émile? It does not make any sense. Émile has nothing to do with what happened out there so why should Konstin have such a reaction? It is not like him.
Unless something about Émile reminded him of the Front. Unless there was another Émile sometime who met a—an unpleasant end. At the very thought Christine's throat tightens, for the family of this other unknown Émile who may not exist but may have once existed and reminded her son of his little brother. Konstin is safe here in Paris and going to get well, and she prays that the war is over by the time he is well but perhaps there is another mother like her somewhere, the mother of a boy Konstin knew and who was not so fortunate as he to be found in time. And a little part of her, a terrible little part of her, is selfishly grateful that it is that other unknown woman in that situation and not her, and the guilt that washes through her makes sweat bead on her forehead.
She is aware that Raoul is watching her, his lip creased in that way that says he is worried for her, but she clears her throat, and fights to keep her voice steady. "Konstin has had a very trying time, Émile. You know that. It is to be expected that being away from all of that would take some getting used to."
Émile makes a noise, one half-caught between uncertainty and agreement, and sighs. "Maybe. I just—I don't know. Something about it feels strange." And he sighs again, and leans back against the couch, his legs stretched on the floor before him. Anja does not stir as his hair brushes her cheek. She must be asleep, and the sight of her sprawled on the divan makes Christine's lip twitch. Poor girl. She has been so busy with both the hospital, and her little meet-ups with Capitaine de Courcy that she thinks no one else knows about.
Christine knows she should be upset over it, knows that she should disapprove over Anja meeting with him unchaperoned. But these are far from normal times and who is to say how much longer they can continue to see each other? So long as Anja does not get herself into trouble there can hardly be any harm in them being sweet on each other. And Christine's heart flutters to think of the way the Capitaine makes Anja so happy, the way she smiles to herself when she thinks no one is watching. Oh, to be nineteen and to think herself in love. It reminds her of when Raoul was first courting her, before there was ever a question about Erik. There was something so gentle and dreamlike about those days, and if something similar can buoy Anja now, then what harm can there be in it?
Émile's whisper draws Christine from her thoughts, and it is as if someone has dumped a bucket of ice water over her head, driving away all of the soft thoughts of love and replacing them with twisting anxiety that clenches her heart tight. "He's on a high dose of morphine, Mamma. I read his chart."
A high dose of morphine. She has never professed any knowledge of pharmacology, but the very words make the vision of Erik's silver hypodermic swim before her, the plunger pulled out nearly as far as it could go, barrel full and ready to administer that terrible fluid into his veins. A high dose. He was on a very high dose. Is that why Konstin needs a high dose? An impression of his father left on him?
Even as she thinks it she knows it is absurd. More likely it is because of the severity of his wounds. But if Émile thinks it is high, it can hardly be that, can it?
She is spared the trouble of answeringbecause Raoul, his voice faintly tight, says, "I'm sure the surgeons have decided it's best for him. There's nothing to worry about." But the very way he smooths his hand over the creases in his trousers makes her shiver.
The nurse, Delphine, massaged his legs before she left to tend to her other duties, but the pain is creeping into the muscles again, leaving them stiff and sore, as if someone has injected them full of lead. If he could, he would twist himself to get down and rub them, to try and stimulate some of the circulation and ease their throbbing, but that would only pull on his wound and leave him in worse pain.
But yet, though his legs are throbbing and making it difficult to sleep, Antoine cannot be too upset over it. He would not be in pain if the efforts at walking were not going so well. It is simply the result of the muscles adjusting to activity again, after so long spent in bed. It is something to be proud of, something to take heart from, especially since, towards the end of the most recent session, he managed to walk around the bed a couple of times with minimal support from Delphine. It is only a sign of his continual improvement.
But it difficult to take heart, difficult to feel the relief of pain, when he is so tired and it will not let him sleep.
Perhaps he should call for a nurse, should ask her for morphine, just this once. Just to help him sleep.
Just this once.
Those fatal words that led Konstin into an opium den in the first place. Just this once, Antoine, and that once turned into more times than either of them could count, left Konstin caught between this world and the next, and Antoine remembers still too well the effort of keeping him breathing, the weight of him in his arms holding him to keep him safe from his own shaking. He sees it in his nightmares.
(He lay on the floor behind Konstin and all night held him close, chest to back, and kissed his damp forehead and hair, and hung on each gasped breath, and when he retched Antoine held back his hair with one hand and lay his other hand on his stomach, felt the contractions of the muscles beneath though there was nothing to come up only the tea that caused it, and rubbed hard to try to ease some of the pain, all of the time whispering and praying and hoping, the tears wet on his cheeks. When the retching ceased he dampened Konstin's cracked lips with tepid water, trickled a little between them, and when the terrible thing he had feared happened and Konstin's slow breathing simply stopped, he trickled cold water into his ear like he saw a stable boy do to a newborn foal once to try to revive it, and when Konstin didn't take a breath though he still had a faint pulse, Antoine rubbed his chest and rolled him over onto his back, and brought their lips together, blowing air into his lungs himself like he heard the lifesaving societies talk about back in Paris, and kept doing that for what felt like an age but only could have been a few breaths, until Konstin gave a weak cough, and took a tiny gasp, and moaned, and Antoine kissed his face, all over his face, his tears smeared, and held him tighter than before, and each weak breath was a gift.)
No. He will not ask for morphine.
If he asks for anything it will be to see Konstin, to be able to sit beside him and touch him and talk to him and know that he is really all right and not have to hear it off someone else. He needs to see Konstin and no one understands that, needs to take his hand and squeeze it and see a flicker of a smile grace those lips. The anxiety, the desperation to see him, twists in his heart, makes it so hard to breathe, and he tightens his fingers in the bed sheets, and takes a shuddering breath to try and ease the pounding of his heart.
Konstin is all right, he's all right, he's all right. But telling himself that and seeing him are two very different things and he needs to see him to be certain.
When he was able to walk around the bed today then maybe, maybe, if he asks Delphine's permission tomorrow she will help him in to see Konstin. If he is calm, and quiet, and asks her softly, maybe she will agree, especially if he tells her that it would be a comfort to Konstin, would help to boost his spirits.
Maybe. Just maybe. And he files it away in his mind as a possibility, as something that he will consider, and simply having a plan is enough to ease the tightness in his chest, and he loosens his grip on the bedsheets. His knuckles protest dully, and even they are stiff from disuse. He briefly considers tapping on the wall, just to check in on Konstin, but he is probably asleep now. Best that he sleep and not be disturbed. He needs his rest after—after Marguerite was in with him for such a long time.
Marguerite. She did not stop in to see him today, but he knows she called on Konstin. He could hear her voice in there, though try as he may to strain his ears he could not hear anything that was said, only her voice, and Konstin's voice lower, and muffled crying. Why was there crying? What could there be for Marguerite or Konstin to cry over?
And the question makes anxiety twist afresh within Antoine though he schools himself to calmness. What could have upset Marguerite? It must be—must be the reason that she looks so worn out, so broken, but why would she talk about it with Konstin and not with him? Or with Guillaume? What could be so terrible that she will not confide in her own brothers?
If Delphine permits him to visit Konstin, perhaps he will ask him, if he thought Konstin would tell him. He needs to know so that he can try to be some comfort to her.
Unless it has nothing to do with what has so affected Marguerite. Unless it is something else, more recent. Panic flares in his heart. Has something happened to his father? Something that they all think he is still too frail to know about?
No. No surely nothing can have happened to his father. If there had then he would have known by Guillaume, Guillaume would have told him, would have decided that he needed to know. But Guillaume simply talked about nothing in particular and left him a newspaper that he is much too tired and sore to try and focus on reading, so surely nothing can have happened to his father.
So it must be whatever happened at the hospital, whatever Marguerite has been trying to hide from him since Konstin's fever broke.
Anja, even, has noticed. Anja saw Marguerite leaving Konstin's room, and came in here to ask him what was wrong with her. And if Anja does not know what is wrong then it cannot be his father, cannot be anything that could have happened while they have been back in Paris. But he could not tell Anja that he does not know, so he mustered up his best smile for her, and patted her hand, and simply told her the same old tired line, that Marguerite is exhausted from what she saw in the hospital. But Anja pursed her lips in the way she learned off Christine, and he knew she did not believe him.
He does not even believe himself these days.
He surfaces slowly. Every part of him feels oddly disconnected from the rest, as if he is in separate pieces. As if parts of him have been amputated.
Amputated.
And the image of Dupuis swims before him. Dupuis, balanced on one leg because the other one had been taken away. It—it is impossible that he is gone. Impossible that anything could have happened to him. Dupuis is the one man who is supposed to continue on, supposed to always be there, calm and steady. He has never once seen him to panic, or baulk in the face of what had to be done.
And he is dead.
Dupuis is dead, and it is his fault. Completely, wholly his fault. It was his order that caused it to happen. His command, and Dupuis is—is gone because of it.
No. Not his command. The order came from higher up, passed down to him. Evening advance, seventeen hundred hours. And they wandered in the fog for what felt like hours. He does not remember much but he remembers that. The mud, the almost-invisible strands of barbed wire. Skirting around shell craters that he could not see until he was almost upon them, some of them deep enough to swallow a whole company. The way blood was dulled by the fog, aged to look old even as it spurted. The flash of Dupuis' green eyes, and a nod. Impressions and scraps, collection of little things that could have come from any crossing, may not necessarily have been that one.
(Why can he not remember?)
Trying to cross in that fog was suicide. He knew that. He knew it. And the Colonel agreed with him as he protested, as the message came down to the lines, but said there was nothing they could do. They could only advance. Anything else would be mutiny.
Mutiny.
How he feared mutiny, feared being branded a traitor. Everything stripped from him, his name, his rank. Everything blackened. His family, Antoine by association, that loose connection of being a technical cousin though not a biological one. Shame brought to his mother, as if they have not whispered enough already. Those fork-tonged liars would simply nod and say, "The son was treasonous? What else could you expect? A background like that. I never believed she was widowed..." And it would have upset her so much. And she would never know why he had done it, would never get to know. Would only hear of a court martial and an execution.
He could have played mad. Could have laid down arms and acted that the shells had addled his brain, had destroyed his senses. And they would lock him up somewhere, keep him somewhere away from reasonable people and try to treat a madness that was not there, the only madness their own attempt to send men across in the fog. And Dupuis would be given the command in his absence until a new Commandant could be found or made. The advance would still have to happen.
He should have mutinied. Should have mutinied and damn the consequences. If he had mutinied, simply refused to pass on the order and denied its existence, then insisted his men were not at fault when it was questioned, Dupuis would still be alive and countless others too. He should have exonerated them, placed the full blame on himself, charged Dupuis to send an already-prepared letter to Mamma explaining the situation, and held his head high before the firing squad. There would not be time to say goodbye to Antoine, but surely Antoine would understand.
Better he to have been executed than for Dupuis and the others to have died. It was his responsibility to lead them, to protect them.
It should have been his responsibility to die in their place.
A tear trickles wet from the corner of his eye, and it feels so much closer than everything else, as if that tear is the one real thing left about him. And he gasps, and swallows, and lets the rest of them come as they will.
The thought drifts to him, unbidden, that the tears are the last thing he has left to give to his men, the last tribute he can pay to them. Wiping them away would be more treasonous than mutiny.
It is some time since her mother left her, with the murmured words that she should get some sleep. But though her eyes ache, and her bones hurt, and she has not the energy to so much as lift a finger, Marguerite is altogether too numb to sleep. She closes her eyes, and wills every thought away, and clears her mind, but instead of sleep bearing her away, the hollowness in her heart forces her to open her eyes again.
It is not that her mind is a whirl of thoughts, of possibilities and conjecture, or that she is turning over anything that Maman said to her. Or even that she is terribly full of Edouard. It is simply that she is nothing, only transparent and insubstantial. She is an assembly of threads, woven together, and one strong breath will blow away the illusion, leave her a bundle on the blankets.
If she could even think of Edouard— but it is as if, by telling Maman about him, she has rendered him as insubstantial as she is, and he slips between her fingers, already faded.
Will Maman tell Papa about him? Surely she must. He will ask, will wonder why she spent so long in here with her, and if anything was said, and Maman will have to tell him or else lie. Perhaps—perhaps it would be best if Maman told him. It would save her own struggling later to find the words beneath his concerned gaze, and maybe it would be easier for him to hear, coming from Maman than from her. Maman would reassure him if he thought ill of the whole thing, reassure him in her worldly gentle way. She has always been so very good at that, at settling Papa when his first reaction is to be irritated or annoyed. He is from a different time, Papa. And though it—it would be impossible to be annoyed at Edouard, he could, somehow, see something untoward in it.
He might even remind her that she has no right to feel this way. No right to have loved Edouard, no right to grieve him. She only knew him a few short days and they seemed to encapsulate the world, and what can a few days compare to a lifetime? What right has she to feel this way when she did not truly know him, only knew him as he was then and nothing of the man before?
It is not her place. She is being inappropriate. And yet, telling herself that does not make the aching longing in her heart any less real, does not make the twisting pain any less sharp, does not make the hollowness, the emptiness, any less numb, any less all-consuming. She loved him. They had only a few days and he was ill for all of it, but she kissed him and she loved him and—
—and footsteps in the hallway disturb her thoughts. The door creaks open, and she looks up, half-expecting to find Maman back again, or else Papa. And she is wrong on both counts because Guillaume is the one standing there in his silken pyjamas, his hair mussed as if he is only out of bed.
"I went down to get a drink and saw your light on," he whispers, and his voice is rough, faintly groggy. And something about how he stands, a little awkward, a little troubled, makes her wonder if he knows, if Maman might have told him too and added on something to the effect of be gentle with her. "How do you feel?"
The question is soft, but that very softness is enough to make tears well in her eyes, and his voice is barely a breath as he murmurs, "Oh, Marguerite," and then he is crossing the room, and the bed dips as he settles on the edge of it, his arms warm pulling her to him. And the tears blur her vision as she leans into him, and his hand is gentle stroking her hair, and he is whispering, murmuring something that she cannot make out through her own whimpers, and all she wants is this, to stay like this forever, wrapped tight in her brother's arms, and not have to think, not have to feel, not have to be anything anymore.
An hour has slipped away since Raoul excused himself for the night, and Émile went up to his own room soon afterwards, yawning and stretching, complaining of stiffness from sitting on the floor. And still, Christine is knitting, though what exactly it is she is not certain anymore. It was supposed to be another scarf, but in the time she has been sitting here it has grown into something far removed from any scarf she has ever seen. Perhaps she should unpick it, bring it back down to size, but that seems such a wasted effort.
But what is she supposed to do with it otherwise? Keep knitting until it grows into something monstrous that could wrap a body three times over? That idea sounds even worse.
She has just sighed, and set down the needles ready to begin the work of unpicking, when Anja groans and stretches. Christine blinks hard, and looks over at the couch. In truth, she was so absorbed in knitting she had forgotten the girl was there.
"Have a nice nap?" She cannot keep the faint current of teasing from her voice. For all that Anja has always enjoyed being busy and having things to do, she has always appreciated a good nap. She was the same when she was small, and all these years later it has never changed.
"It was all right," and she sighs, her fingers tapping her bodice. "Mamma? Do you believe that Marguerite is just worn out?"
The question makes Christine's hand still. Sorelli has mentioned it to her, twice actually, that she is worried for Marguerite. She said, in fact, that she did not seem herself at all, and when Christine suggested that it might be due to the strain of working so close to the Front, Sorelli shook her head and whispered, it's more than that. I know it is.
And for the second time tonight, Christine is fighting to keep her voice steady and unconcerned. "What makes you ask that?"
Anja turns to look at her, and her lip is creased in just the same way Raoul's would be, and her words come in a rush. "I saw her leaving Konstin's room today, and she was very pale. She looked almost as if she had been crying. But I couldn't say anything to her because I was taking care of a patient, and by the time I got to stop in with Konstin one of the other nurses had given him a dose of morphine and he was almost asleep so I couldn't get any sense out of him. He just kept rambling on about someone called Dupuis. I sat with him a few minutes and decided to stop in with Antoine to see if he might know what's wrong with Marguerite, but he just got this funny look on his face, the kind where he's telling you something but you know he's not telling you everything and he got that look when I asked him about Persia but that's another story. When I asked him about Marguerite he just said she was worn out, but he had that look so I know there's more than that. Something happened Mamma. There must have."
And when she is finished, the silence drags on. But there are no words Christine can think of to fill it, only to comment that it does not sound like the Marguerite she has always known to let the stress get to her. She should go over there, tomorrow, to talk to Sorelli, and see her goddaughter herself. Maybe there is something she can do to help.
The darkness of the room presses in on him, makes it difficult to breathe. He has a brief flash of waking up from a nightmare, of the walls pressing in on him and Antoine's soft voice. The train. That must have been on the train because the walls here do not press as badly as that, are more open, yet the darkness makes the guilt in his stomach weigh as heavy as a stone, and his throat is as tight as if there were a noose wrapped around it, rope digging into his skin.
He deserves nothing less than a noose, nothing less than to be strung up.
There is pain, creeping in, distant pain in his leg, gnawing at him, prickling. The pain is good. The pain means that the morphine is wearing off, and it is best that the morphine wear off, best that he not get any relief. He does not deserve relief, deserves only to suffer, deserves to burn endlessly forever.
His eyelids keep fighting to close, fighting to replace the darkness of the room with their own softer darkness. And then to replace the darkness with fog, and blood, and remembered crashing shells. Or the conjured image of Dupuis, stretched in the hospital bed, gasping for breath. Or the lines and lines of bodies laid out, waiting to be moved, to be buried. The jet of blood from Mazet's neck. Henri's white face and staring eyes.
Is it better to stay awake? To stay awake and feel the pain throbbing in every wounded part of him? Hips and knee and stomach and ribs and chest and arm? Or better to succumb to sleep, and be faced with the horrors that his command caused?
Or is it, that the longer he forces himself to stay awake, the worse the horrors will be when he inevitably does succumb?
That, perhaps, is the only just way. Let him suffer the pain, and then suffer the memories. It is only right.
A/N: This is not actually the chapter I had planned to post yesterday. In fact, I've only written this one since Tuesday! In my editing for what I was planning to post I realised that it kinda needed another chapter before it, and so this came to exist.
This is also the chapter which officially (using the Word wordcount instead of the FFN which seems to inflate the length of fics) pushes this fic to over 100k words! So I'm pretty happy over that.
I'm also happy that this chapter has pushed my fic wordcount fic (according to AO3, because of FFN's wordcount weirdness) to just over 500k! I started posting fic in March 2014, so have posted over a half a million words since then feels great.
Having reached that milestone, I'm hoping to reach 200k words posted in 2017. Some quick calculations reveal that I'm already at 178k for the year, so that goal is in sight, especially with another chapter and an epilogue for this, some ficlets, and two long-ish things that I want to write and post in the next few days. So it's been a great year for fic!
I'm still hoping to post the epilogue to this on Christmas Eve, so with that in mind, the next chapter will be posted tomorrow!
And thank you to all you wonderful people who have been following this and leaving reviews. They quite literally give me life and hopefully (maybe) we can push this to 200 reviews by the end of the month!
And one last thing, if you haven't checked out my one-shot 'Sainte Nuit' please do! It's set in this 'verse only 35 years later, when Konstin is a baby, and it is about his first Christmas. I would love to get some more love on that!
Up next: I'm definitely not saying now!