The Dead

The city, at long last, was quieting down for the night or perhaps the conflict had moved on. Murmurs and muffled sobs echoed down silent streets, where but an hour before they were filled with screams. In the silence, Jean-Claude Leroux's boots echoed ten-fold - a scuffling, uneven pace as he attempted to obliterate the last several hours in the bottle clutched tightly under one arm. It was a rough life living in a city where innocence was crushed under foot and the government advocated outright murder. Where a thousand eyes looked for the flaws in others to exploit. Where one had to hide behind masks of indifference or suffer the brand of a traitor. After a night like this, Leroux felt the need to be thoroughly numbed. True that need came on a near nightly basis, but this one� this one was especially horrible.

He'd had a ten block detour to shake off anyone foolish enough to follow, but no one was following their better sights (and targets) than a drunken guard. He slipped into the alley where he could access door and waited a half of an hour to make doubly sure, then slipped in through the door. He took his boots off at the bottom of the stairs and crept up on silent, bare feet. Opened the first door on the right (Leroux rented both the rooms on that floor) and went inside to quickly change and clean off as much as he could of the blood and filth of the night's events. Leroux picked up the rough sabots from the corner, the bottle, and quietly slipped out of the door and into the next door where his guest was.

The lady was on the bed where he left her, sleeping fitfully. On closer inspection, he found her cheeks still wet with tears. Whether she realized it yet or not, she was a very fortunate woman. Not everyone in La Force that night could say as much.

Gently he lay his coat over the sleeping woman and took a seat at the table by the window where he could watch the street below. This woman had been a sign of change, the lord alone knew what was coming.

Her life these last two months had been filled with this waiting and non-stop fretting first Armand (God rest his soul!) and now Percy � she was growing increasingly ill under anxiety. Her ordeal with Chauvelin and in La Force has weakened her, but it was the fear that sent her health into decline � robbing her of her strength and leaving her a weak as a baby. Even if her earlier apprehensions of her host had been accurate, there was little she could have done if he had acted against her, but by some miracle Leroux had left her unmolested and saw to her needs so that she felt guilty of her earlier apprehension of him.

In fact it was the news Leroux brought her that gave Marguerite the strength to go on � he was her only link to the world of the living now. She knew from Chauvelin that Percy was to go to trial yesterday and yet the Scarlet Pimpernel did not appear before the bench (God, be praised!) Perhaps he's free, perhaps he eluded the mob, it was that which gave Marguerite hope despite her nightmares to the contrary. In Fact, there was no news on him at all. She sent out all her prayers to dearest Percy, where ever he was, in the hopes that the Lord above would watch over him.

She struggled to sit up as she heard the door latch click and saw her somber host enter. Leroux looked less frightening than the man who had saved her two nights ago, perhaps her brain had played tricks on her that night. In fact, except for the furrow between his light eyebrows, a couple of cruel scars, and eyes that spoke of harsh living he might pass for a mere boy.

"Has there been any word?" she asked, her eyes fixing on the bit of crumpled white paper he clutched in one hand.

"Yeah," Leroux murmured, looking down at the paper he held � how would she react? He'd considered hiding the news until she recovered, but as Marguerite's health only seemed to decline truth was the best course. He looked down into her pale, hopeful face and his heart swelled with pity. She lay all her hopes on a slim chance, a dangerous folly, and now those hopes would be dashed. It was unfair, but since when was the world fair?

He closed the door behind him, went to her, and swatted by the rough palette that that served as her bed. "There's been an announcement circulated by one of Chauvelin's agents." He handed her the crumpled paper. "It has not officially been made news, but it was being circulated through the assembly. I imagine Chauvelin is using it as a means to swell his opinion rating."

Her hands trembled as she took the sheaf of paper Leroux offered her and read the hesitancy in his face - oh god! oh, dear God! She closest her eyes and sent a prayer to heaven that her worse fears were not written on that paper. Slowly, ever so slowly, she opened her eyes and focused on the print before her. She stared at it without thinking, letting words sinking in as they would in random order. Letters. Words. Names. Marks on a page, but what they represented was infinitely more important. Scarlet Pimpernel were the first words to spring forth, perhaps because they were so alien � an awkward foreigner among the elegant French. And then there was Chauvelin, a name that sent feeling of revulsion and dread through her. Then more words crowding in, jumbling, until she force her self to read it through. Even then she had to read it through again and again before the words sank it.

Dead. Percy was dead.

According to the page she read, he was killed in the raid on La Force before he could be brought to trial The People's justice done and all credit for his capture going to Chauvelin.

A stab of pain shot through her heart, her lungs constricted, and she felt certain she would die at that moment, she gasped for air, but the end didn't come. The sharp pain became a heavy dull ache as her heart collapsed in on itself.

Save for a few golden shafts of natural light that penetrated the walls of roses, the bower was lit in pinks and greens and faded scarlet where the sun glowed through thin leaves and petals. It was a enchanted place, a fairy tale place, full of the magic as she had long since stopped believing in, but this world invited the suspension of disbelief. How could one not believe in magic here? Something like this could never exist in the world she had been raised in. But it was real, it was solid, she could touch it and smell it and feel the light on her skin� and, more importantly, *he* was here.

She sensed him beside her, watching her, and this was the part where she say something, but found her tongue crippled. She couldn't bring herself to look up into his eyes as he took her hands in his, folding her hands around something soft and warm, and somehow she knew already it was the most perfect of red roses, but perhaps it was his heart he lay in her hands to nurture or crush. "For you," he whispered in her ear. "More perfect than anything man could devise. I could never give you anything more special than this." It was a moment of perfect trust, perfect love. This was the part of the fairy tale where they should live happily ever after � why then the fear?

"You do love me," he whispered. "Words lie where kisses cannot. I will admit it's early to feel so much, but I know you do love me." And for the first time she realized he was right. She looked up into sparkling blue eyes and realized this was the moment when it had begun � this moment when he had open his soul to her for the first time � where he let down his guard. She dismissed it and ignored it ans convinced herself that the feeling was everything but, but this was the moment she began to fall in love. That moment in the rose garden, when their relationship was relatively new. They had wasted so much time � so much time. Time that could never been recaptured, time that was got. And then she realized that that fairy tale castle was no miracle, but the thorny bars of her prison � a moment that could never be again.

Sometime she recognized that it was a dream or a memory as the real world invaded in the for of cold compresses and soothing words or distant shouts. At other time, this garden was the real world � Marguerite had no interest in knowing any other. Occasionally the truth solidified in her brain � Percy was gone � and she would retreat further into the dream. Something in her heart would not give him up.