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hellolittleogre · 5 years

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Billy Goody Jane Eyre AU

@lazaefair wrote a wonderful not!fic Billy x Goody Jane Eyre AU, which you can find here, and it was amazing and then my brain went but what if Goody was the mad wife in the attic? Because Wide Sargasso Sea is a thing. And then my brain went BOOM and spat this out.

Thank you @lazaefair for the inspiration, it was really fun writing this and I hope you don’t feel like I’m playing all over your sandbox.

The not!fic is under the cut because its a lot.

Soooooooo, it struck be that of course the real touchstone for this would not only be Jane Eyre, but also Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys about Bertha’s life before the attic, and the Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte, about a woman who marries for love but her husband is a abusive and a drunkard.

Goodnight is the rich spoiled son of a Creole family on Jamaica who runs away with his brother to fight in the America civil war (they have family in Louisiana), he admires his brother and has always done what his he did. The brother dies and Goody becomes a celebrated sharpshooter but still comes home a disgrace, fighting for the losing side, severely traumatised and having made friends with Sam Chisholm a free black man, and with alarming notions about equality and slavery.

The family marries him off to Bouge as quick as they can with a fat dowry and no questions asked. (Same sex marriages exist with the proviso that the leading partner is allowed to have one official mistress in order to have an heir, or the couple can joint decide to adopt a child).

Bouge, a nouveau riche robber baron is at first elated over such a social coup, a status spouse, old money, beauty plus the official allowance to have a mistress in order to get an heir but soon he realises he has been cheated. Once the honeymoon is over and they have settled on his new estate in England he realises the extent of his mistake.

Goody is too frail, too obviously damaged to help him get ahead socially and it's a scandal to have a mad husband, can’t even fulfill his marriage duties because he is so mentally frail (Think pretty vulnerable Ethan Hawke in the mid 90s), Bouge finds this unacceptable.

Goodnight has written letters tightly to Sam during the first year as married, trying to put on a good front (elements of the Tenant of Wildfell hall), too proud to admit mistakes. He tries to have optimism, maybe Bouge will have a child and the act of raising it will bring them together. Surely Goody is just to sensitive to his meanness, tries to be a good partner but Bouge will have none of it.

Then he has a bad period and Bouge locks him away, writes to Sam and tells him Goody has asked him to cease writing it that his emotional state is too easily upset to undertake this task himself. Sam insists that Goody writes and Bouge gets pretty nasty.

“If you knew how he begged me, your attentions upsets him and you are a constant reminder of his unhappy past. I would not be so I gentlemanly to make further reference to your history but cease this contact, if only for the sake of the one you profess to love so.”

Sam realises he has to play the long game.

Meanwhile Billy has grown up in an orphanage, the son of a woman who came to work as a servant to a British explorer. The man was working and collecting in China, and even managed to gain entry to Joseon, where he took the woman on as houskeeper. When his mother died the man took Billy in out of good will and when he suddenly died too, Billy was bundled along with the rest of his belongings to his family back in England. The family was expecting a white child and are besides themselves when Billy shows up, it might be implied that the explorer had fathered him (he hadn't, Billy had a very loving father who unfortunately also died. If anyone feels all this dying is unrealistic I would please refer you to Elizabeth Gaskell). Billy is pushed off as quick as they can to a school. He is very learned due to the old gentleman and becomes a very good student. When he is grown he advertises as a tutor. The boys home taught him how to fight, he makes two friends a brash Irish boy called Faraday, illegitimate child and Vasquez, nephew of some Spanish noblewoman married to an English lord (everyone’s an orphan! see: Gaskell)

Billy has been working as a tutor for a while when he meets Bouge, he wants a governess for a little girl but changes his mind when he finds Billy.

Billy is curious as to why, as it turn out Adele his ward is half Vietnamese, her mother a French-vietnamese dancer who used to be Bouge’s mistress and Bouge figures one Asian is as good as another.

Adele is as vain and silly as she is in the book and Billy kind of loves her. Her airy head has lots of space for learning. She speaks french and english in a charming unselfconscious mix and Billy was worried how they might talk to each other but in the end he finds that his old tutors were right, the language of arithmetic is universal.

She is not Bouge’s daughter, his mistress in Paris left him and he killed her new lover and stole her daughter to torment her. She is now destitute in Paris and he sends her letters now and then to remind her that her daughter is entirely at his mercy.

He tells Adele that her maman is dead,.

Billy hears somebody crying at night. Adele is terrified of the crying ghost but later calms down, and when Billy asks after a couple of days she says the ghost is telling her fairy stories in French and he's not dangerous, only sad. Billy is kind of bewildered by this. Sees a man spying on him in the library, looks like nobody in the household.

Bouge has come back, Billy startles his horse, and he twists his ankle and Billy has to help him home, Bouge says that he owes him entertainment for being responsible for his incarceration. There is something hungry in how he looks at Billy. Sends for him in the evenings and talk to him.

Taunts Adele, Billy tries telling himself that it is playfully. “that's how she charmed the money straight out of my pretty pocket”. Pinches her nose and cheeks just a little too hard

Billy is teaching Adele how to fight and Bouge watches them, silent and approving, eyes roving over Billy. Presses him a little. Mentions in passing that he is dependent on him, that without reference he would never be hired again, and then how will he live. No relations and no means?

Flirts a little and makes promises, comes down one evening with his face scratched, “by an owl” but you'd always be sweet to me? It makes Billy smile. It's nice to be wanted.

Billy hears the ghost crying at night, sees a white figure in the hallways.

Then as a cold shower Bouge invites a party of similarly ranked men, McCann and Denali, hints that he might be engaged to McCann. That he might ruin Billy and leave him on the street. Your reputation is in my hands, you can never leave me.

Billy meets the ghost man. Himself and Adele are exploring the garrets when he hears a voice singing a drinking song, they can't decide from where the sound is coming from but Adele is not afraid, it is the Goodnight man, he helps me sleep. He speaks French like maman.

Eventually Billy, pretty stiff with fear at this point though he would never admit it, finds a little crawl space that leads into another stairs and they find Goodnight. (Goody is kept in a room which is bolted not locked from the outside and his nurse often dips into the laudanum and he goes wandering.) He is beautiful and confused, flitting between lucidity and imagination but the more Adele and Billy talks to him the steadier he becomes.

Goodnight are convinced they are figments of his imagination. A little girl as he imagined at the beginning of the marriage. To tell stories to and never never go to war. And their shared features convinced him, Billy and the child with the same dark hair, mere reality could never conjure anything so beautiful.

They meet at night, both of them still not convinced the other is real. Adele calls him The prince in the tower after the story of Richard III nephews and Billy secretly agrees.. Billy wakes up one night to find Goody at the foot of his bed, looking terrible. He startles and goes looking for him. Follows him into Bouge room and finds a candle overturned, saves him from the flames.

Bouge proposes the next day.

Billy accepts, he's tired of being at somebody else's mercy and charity all the time. Bouge is not too unpleasant to look at, his attention is flattering and being a married spouse offers a hell of a lot more protection than he ever thought he would have. So he accepts.

(Bouge plans to marry him so he can become his legal guardian and force him to be his assassin, plus Billy is hot)

Meets Goody and tells him he is going to stay, and that they will have more time together. Omits to mention that it's because he's getting married. He feels reluctant to tell Goodnight that.

Billy brings wine up one night and becomes terribly drunk and kisses Goodnight. The last little bit of freedom I have left.

Adele tells Bouge about the ghost and Billy tries to downplay it and when Bouge won't be deterred he makes up a story about seeing a woman in white, an interred nun. However it makes Bouge confine Goody more securely and they can't meet anymore. Billy is smart enough to understand he can't let Bouge know he and Goody know each other.

The night before his marriage he hears Goodnight wailing in the tower, like a banshee or a condemned soul.

Sam and Red show up to stop the wedding. Sam has been living in the Indian territories (Bass Reeves!) and befriended him and finally has bided his time enough to come to Europe and track down Goodnight (they have agreed to go on a Grand Tour if it turns out Goody is fine), Bouge tries to say that he is dead but Billy puts two and two together and alerts them of Goodnight in the tower.

“There he is,” Bouge says with disdain, Goodnight white and crouched at the far end of the room, “Who would not change a vulture for a raven? Look at him, so hale and beautiful, who can blame me?”

Red and Sam bring the family lawyer who concludes that its not lawful for Bouge and Billy to be married but equally since Goody must be seen as mentally deficient its perfectly fine for Bouge to keep him locked in the attic. Like y’know, no problem.

Sam and Red tries to resist but are powerless to help, Bouge locks Goody away, very upsetting scenes between Goodnight and Sam, fighting to get to each other.

Goody comes to Billy’s room at night, tells him he has to go, go Bouge plans to do something terrible to him (possibly lock him in the cellar?) Billy doesn’t want to leave but has no choice, Goody refuses to follow him. Without me you have a chance but if I come with you Bouge will never stop hunting us, besides he has the law on his side if he chooses to bring me back while you can go where you chose and have full protection of the law.

Billy flees in the night and ends up on the moors with Faraday and Vasquez, who are living together in a cabin (coincidence!)

They plan to go back and free Goodnight (and Adele) but before that Billy finds out that the explorers family has all died and he is the sole heir, he is now rich enough to take up the fight against Bouge. He hears Goody call for him in the night.

They prepare but as they are travelling back the hear that the whole house has burnt down and the poor madman in the attic perished in the flames. Billy goes over to kill Bouge but instead finds Goodnight, the house (mysteriously!) caught fire (some say they saw a man with a bow and arrow but such talk is nonsense surely?) and Bouge died in the flames. Goodnight was rescued and inherited the lot.

Then they all live together and are disgustingly rich. They send for Adele’s maman and Emma comes to be Adele’s governess.

FIN

#not!fic #The Magnificent Seven (2016)#mag seven Jane Eyre AU #fanfic #billy x goody #wide sargasso sea #the tenant of wildfell hall #jane eyre

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