#( vautrin: they haven't made contact. they haven't visited me. message received )

[daybreakrising]

VAUTRIN DRABBLE; BREAKING NEWS

The news was quick to break across Fontaine. Captain Vautrin, right-hand to the Iudex, has been arrested for murder.

Aurélie was not one for gossip, and often disregarded the sly whisperings passed between her neighbours should it reach her own ears. Gossip was unsavoury, its intentions usually to slander, to sully. Therefore, it was not worth her time. There were, however, certain key words that would draw her attention without fail – and one of those was the name of her son.

She had barely taken three strides from the gates of her home before she felt the gazes of many upon her, heard the blanket of whispers descend around her. This in itself was nothing out of the ordinary for her. A star upon the stage since her girlhood, possessing of both great beauty and talent, she has spent a lifetime in the spotlight, for better and for worse. But there was an air about Fontaine this morning that filled her with a sense of building dread. And then… she heard it.

Captain Vautrin… arrested for murder.

Vautrin.

Vautrin.

The blood drained from her face in an instant. No… no it cannot be… this must be a cruel rumour… Yet now she could see the heavy presence of gardes in the streets, the unusual liveliness at what is typically a quiet hour of the morning. And the looks her neighbours were giving her… pity, she recognised, and judgement. The spotlight has often weighed on her shoulders before now, but this is something else. She has never been looked at with such… negativity.

It takes but a few seconds for her to turn on her heel and flee back into the sanctuary of her home.

"Évariste! Évariste!" She dashes through the spacious hallway with none of her usual grace and poise, until she all but stumbles into the concerned arms of her husband. She lifts her gaze to his, sees the surprise, the question that lingers there, and her eyes fill with tears. It is an effort to make her lips move, to force the words out. "Something terrible has happened…"

--

Évariste, at first, refused to believe it. With an insistence that it was a misunderstanding, or some deliberately spiteful lie, he left her cowering behind closed doors whilst he sought answers. She begged him not to go, to stay with her here, but he would not listen. So she lingered, alone, pacing the rooms that were once filled with life, but now feel empty. She drew the drapes over every window, lest the entirety of Fontaine come to peek at the disgraced family, surrounding herself with a darkness that matched the one in her heart.

Time ticks by without her acknowledgement – so lost is she in her thoughts that she finds herself standing in a room she has not entered in many years, quite without realising her feet were taking her there.

Everything is just as it was.

Neither of them could ever bring themselves to move a single thing, and so it remains like a museum display of what once was. She stands amidst the last echoes of her son – a bed still neatly made by his hands, a stack of books left behind on his bedside table, clothes that no longer fit him still hanging in his closet. He had taken some items on his departure, but he had not taken them all, and neither had they sent them to his new place of residence. Perhaps, she mused now, they had hoped he would return for them, would return to them. But he never had.

The room beside this one is similar in its state of preservation. Two children they'd had, and two children they'd lost. Where did we go wrong in life? What did we do to warrant this agony?

There is only one thing out of place here, an addition she has made herself: a book, sitting in pride of place on the empty desk by the window. It is to this that she moves towards, her hands smoothing over the soft leather cover before carefully opening it to the first page. Her fingertips trace over an old flyer, affixed to the page with great care, for a production long since retired: but it is her son's name that features in big, bold letters. His debut on the stage. Oh, how they'd had such dreams for his future.

She turns the page as painful memories rear their ugly heads. Such talent he'd had… he had moved with such grace, such elegance. She had wept every time she watched him dance, and now she weeps for what could have been. She flips carefully through page after page of memories, of recorded achievements and awards, of performance advertisements and playbills. She cannot bear to look at them for long. After a time, the playbills and awards stop, to be replaced instead by notices and clippings from newspapers, many of them bearing headlines:

Notorious Thief Apprehended At Last By Rookie Garde Young Garde Saves Drowning Children Special Security Officer Uncovers Hidden Nefarious Plot! Remarkable Garde Becomes Youngest Special Security Captain In History Captain Vautrin: Right Hand To The Iudex?

She lingers upon this last clipping, her gaze resting heavily upon the image that accompanies it. The Iudex of Fontaine, standing as elegantly and imposing as ever, beside a handsome young man in a pristine uniform. There is no colour to the image, but she can picture the vibrant wine of his hair, the soft hazel of his eyes. Her boy, her beloved boy, achieving greatness in his own way, just as he had promised he would.

It is here that Évariste finds her. He stands at her back, hands upon her shoulders – hands that long to comfort, but cannot, for he brings only dire tidings. It is no lie. Their son has indeed been arrested for murder, and a murder most atrocious at that. He has stained his name, tarnished his previously pristine reputation. He has thrown everything away, yet again. Yet again, it is in the name of a cause he believes in, a cause he will not falter upon.

Amongst the agony of this terrible truth, there is a flicker of something fond: he may have grown, may have changed from the boy that walked away from them without looking back, but at heart… he is still the same. Still their Vautrin.

But the flicker cannot survive for long amidst the smothering dread – for they have well and truly lost their last remaining child. He will be sentenced to a life beneath the sea, never to return. He will go beyond their reach for the last time. Tomorrow's paper will bear a new headline, but one that will never make it into this book:

Captain Vautrin: Guilty Of Brutal Slaughter