Heart of Stone - MLB
How had it all gone so wrong? They had been so happy. And now she was lost and all her world was pain. If she could move the heavens and the earth to bring him back, she would, without hesitation she would. People passed her, looked at her as if she was the main attraction in a freak show. As if to say "Look how far the mighty has fallen". She knew what would come next. There was no other path for her. Evicted from her flat, her heart dead… There was only one door left to take, the one she had closed and hoped to never open again.
A storm was brewing over Paris, rivaling the one in her soul. She knew she should calm herself, should try and be rational. Wasn't that what her family had always said? Don't feel, feeling is useless to success. The family motto - or as good as.
Her steps were heavy as she returned to the cage she had once called home.
Braziers burning, they'd turn night into day.
Heavy shutters to keep the caged bird in.
She had flown from the cage years ago and yet, here she was.
As soon as she entered, the whispers started.
"So the prodigal child returns"
"She has some nerves to show her face in society again after what she did"
"Seems she's done playing with the riff-raff now"
They didn't even have the decency to be quiet about it. As if her pain meant nothing, as if his death meant nothing.
He had not been what her parents had expected of her. Far from it.
His skin had been kissed by the sun hers had so rarely felt, his gaze timid that first day they met. His hands had been rough, calloused, not at all like the silk she had felt all her life. His parents had been poor, workers in a factory. He had been proud of it, of how far he had made it.
Were they laughing at her or was that just a mirage? Did it truly matter?
Do not judge him! She wanted to yell. You do not know him, don't know what it is like to work to get where you are. All your happiness is an empty lie, your values are hollow, up for sale to the highest bidder.
In another life, she might have been one of them. In another life she might have been like Marjorie, like Claudette, like Audrey. Shallow and self-absorbed and empty. She'd have married the man her parents chose for her, she'd have spent her entire life in her pretty golden cage. A pretty bird, singing a vapid song, blissful in her ignorance of life. But she had wanted to see the world, to know what lay outside her comfortable prison. And seen she had. A worker's son who dreamed of beauty had shown her the truth of life and the true meaning of the word beautiful. And together they had dreamed.
But where were those dreams now? All their lives they'd built together in their dreams and she had felt, truly felt, for the first time in her memory. And now that he was gone, she was spinning in the nothingness he'd left behind, like a compass without a North. Disoriented, lost. What was the world without him in it?
In truth, she knew not how much time had passed since that fateless night. A robbery, the ruling had been, unfortunate but a fact of life. A robbery in which nothing was stolen? A robbery in which the perpetrator waited patiently for his victim to come home instead of leave?
Ever since that night she had been out of it, like the clouds over Paris hung over her spirit as well, wrapping everything in cotton until she was far removed from everything.
"He should never have been allowed to look upon her"
"His fate was that of all that reach above their station"
"He lived as no-one and he died as no-one"
"So the princess lost her pet? What a pity"
They were definitely laughing now. At her or him, she couldn't say. Didn't much care, either. Don't you laugh! You don't know what pain is. You who made killing your heart a form of art.
All the gold and glimmer around her almost blinded her, but she knew it was but superficial. Pretty dressing to hide the rot beneath. But no amount of roses and diamonds could cover up that stench.
I'll see you in the Hereafter, my love . It felt like the world was falling apart, like she was drowning, crying for help that would not come. Spinning in the empty, round and round and round.
She had finally crossed the room, reached what she had come for. It looked so innocent, so benign, resting on its bed of velvet snow.
"Do not dare!" Her father's voice. Authoritarian as ever.
"You command me not" no inflection in her voice, despite the storm that ravaged her heart.
"Do not touch it, daughter!"
She took it, took its two companions too.
"You seek to toy with forces far beyond your ken!" her mother, vapid as ever. Wrong, as well. She knew exactly what she was doing. The only thing that made any sense anymore.
She could not live without him. So she would not.
Sun rose over Paris. She had read the book, had learned its darkest secrets. And as she walked towards the cemetery she opened up the floodgates. The brewing storm crescendoed.
She moved the heavens and the earth. They were shaking, straining under the force of her emotions.
Darkness spread that had nothing to do with the storm clouds. Lightning crashed. The shadows coalesced, they drew towards her, the epicentre and the drawing force.
She had reached her destination. He had not even been buried yet. Just as well. No need for digging then.
The storm raged outside, the darkness clouded the streets. She raised her hands, gathered it to herself, the physical manifestation of her pain and suffering.
"You don't get to leave me yet. I need you still. Without you, I spin in the emptiness left behind." Her voice was the gentle caress of a rose newly bloomed. Her next words, contrastingly, were as much plea as command, breathed against his lips in a kiss of dark and life.
"Come back to me, Gabriel"
A gasp. A shudder. The storm died and sapphire pearls revealed themselves.
"Émilie?"
***
Cold. He was ever cold. As if her death had taken all the warmth from the world. In a way, maybe it had. What she had done, that day so many years ago, it should have been impossible. But then, what was impossible to the woman whose grief was a storm over all Paris? She had been miraculous, even without the magic brooches and the book no-one but her could read. And now she was gone.
A year like an eternity had passed him by since. What held him here, where she no longer dwelled?
He put down the pencil. What was he trying to do? He knew he was passionate about this. That he loved to create new and exciting garments. But he did not feel it. He felt nothing. Only an endless abyss staring into him staring back.
He knew he loved his son, knew he cherished his friends. Remembered the excitement of finding new talent and helping it blossom. But he felt nothing of it.
Only occasionally, when the feeling would have been especially overwhelming, his son would manage to pull from him an echo of the emotion he knew he should be feeling. But apart from that, he was frozen inside. Mort-vivant. Dead and yet alive, if you could call it that. He did not eat, he did not sleep. His heart beat not in his chest.
That was the price, he supposed, for her deeds. She brought him back to life and so live he would, a walking, talking corpse, only truly alive when she was.
All that mattered now, was to do for her what she had done for him. Bring her back, return to her the life so cruelly stolen. He had no powers such as hers, his natural empathy but a parlor trick to the forces of her soul. So he needed the miraculous. Maybe Adrien would never forgive him, it meant little. What good was a father who could not feel? The child was better off with his mother. He would bring her back. Nothing else mattered.
Nothing else mattered.