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Post by Adrian Veidt on Jun 30, 2010 21:23:07 GMT -5
"I suppose not."
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Post by Adrien Baillon on Jun 30, 2010 21:37:38 GMT -5
Lucie tapped him on the shoulder gently as though to say, 'wait here,' and tiptoed off.
She returned with a slim leather folder tied wth a thong, and sat down beside him at the table, carefully opening it. The first thing was a piece torn out from a newpaper from 1924, about the arrest of a pimp named Jean-Marie Louis Aucoin. There was a photograph of him in the paper, which was why it had been kept. He was fantastically blond, and while normally one would look at Lucie and her son and say he clearly took after her, his nose was straighter - she had a tiny button nose - and his face a bit less heart-shaped, and his hair fell in a way that all indicated the father. There were only slight differences, but the resemblance between the man on the page and Adrien was striking, if less so than that between the boy and Lucie.
She tapped it gently with one finger. "I kept this... I think so I wouldn't forget his face. I didn't feel anything for him. It was... it wasn't that sort of thing. I was fourteen. It only happened once."
She pulled out the rest, photographs, and shuffled through them, peering at them.
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Post by Adrian Veidt on Jun 30, 2010 22:44:47 GMT -5
For a moment, Adrian recalled a woman, tall and blonde and with a strong, beautiful face, stretched out beside him and smiling in a reserved, catlike fashion, before he drove her back into his memories again.
"I understand completely."
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Post by Adrien Baillon on Jun 30, 2010 22:51:20 GMT -5
"It doesn't upset me," said Lucie ruminatively. "But he, he wasn't much older." She tucked that away with delicate fingertips, like a mother tucking in a child, and laid out a few photographs of a completely adorable and doll-like bb with big eyes and beautiful blond bbcurls, clutching a worn-out bear painfully obviously homemade of scraps of fabric from the bits and pieces left over after the clothing he was wearing had been sewn.
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Post by Adrian Veidt on Jun 30, 2010 23:06:00 GMT -5
Uncomfortable naming coincidences or not, Claire didn't resemble Klara nearly as much as the infant Adrien did, and this brought its own brand of discomfort. Adrian lifted one of the photographs as though it were a holy icon and studied it for a moment before abruptly setting it back down.
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Post by Adrien Baillon on Jun 30, 2010 23:10:06 GMT -5
Tucking those away swiftly, Lucie showed him one of the two-year-old Adrien clinging to his kneeling mother with a dazed, dreamy bbface, baby curls plastered to his forehead and sticking a bit to hers. Lucie had a look of the ever-young and virginal even now, but at sixteen she had looked almost like a child - an orphan child, painfully, painfully thin and a touch gawkier than now (in a way reminiscent of how Adrien had been when he'd first begun cross-dressing - gawky and grinning and not at all sexualized).
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Post by Adrian Veidt on Jun 30, 2010 23:14:39 GMT -5
"I see," Adrian said softly. "He was a beautiful child."
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Post by Adrien Baillon on Jun 30, 2010 23:21:39 GMT -5
Lucie beamed almost awkwardly, radiantly proud and absent-mindedly hugging her photos to her chest, then looking downward at them modestly, bent over like a seamstress, and scooting close enough so that under the table, their knees brushed. Not putting away the spread photos, she laid out a few more, like cards, in a careful, birdlike manner. "These were some friends of mine," Lucie said carelessly, tossing her head just a bit, as there were some oddly candid photos of a number of painted women, young but most of them looking jaded - all but Lucie, who had stopped being thin enough that it was painful and developed into a fille fatale similar to the one Adrian had taken against the wall after a dinner out one evening, who was young and pure-faced no matter what - all clearly prostitutes, wearing their cheapest finery and paint and treating the three-year-old Adrien like both a fashion doll and a baby doll at once. No matter who or what, in every photograph of him as a child Adrien seemed to be clinging to something.
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Post by Adrian Veidt on Jun 30, 2010 23:34:05 GMT -5
"He doesn't know," Adrian said after a long silence. "He told me about his upbringing, and... he doesn't realize any of this..."
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Post by Adrien Baillon on Jun 30, 2010 23:38:09 GMT -5
There was another long silence.
"I didn't at the time," said Lucie very softly. She was looking down and staring. Then she pulled the photographs closer to her chest, and looked down at them again, before turning her head back up and staring straight forward, as though a little blinded by memories. "I thought it was... well... something of a sorority. It's not the same as being on the street - and I'd done that - leaving my child on doorsteps all day and trudging back to him with dinner I'd just made the money to buy... you can raise a child in - in a cathouse, Mr. Veidt."
He face grew colder, a miniscule change that suddenly made her go from a warm, breathing, lovely woman to a glacial impression of one, though it was a change in posture rather than expression. "Until the madam notices your son is pretty... he was seven... and I was enraged... so I left."
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Post by Adrian Veidt on Jun 30, 2010 23:44:27 GMT -5
"I understand."
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Post by Adrien Baillon on Jun 30, 2010 23:52:47 GMT -5
"I think it was good for him, though," she said, a bit relieved. "Shortly after he turned five he finally - finally started talking. I was so happy...I thought he was, well," and she made a gesture at the head, and then shook hers. "He did not enroll in school until he was nine, but he was so happy that day..."
A photograph of an unusually small child - malnutrition - with his hands clutching the schoolboy tie on his school uniform, beaming his babyteeth at the camera. "Adrien liked school so much, even though he was... well, he wasn't any good at it from the standards of the other children... but he worked so hard... He still almost never talked; his teachers told me they couldn't get him to speak up in classes..."
There was a class photo, too. Adrien was in the middle of a clump of girls. All children manage to look a bit angelic, though many lost their looks at that age, but Adrien seemed to have morphed from a tiny, chubby cherub into a semi-tall, thin, swan-boy, his hair still a bit wavy at the edges. He was very recognizeable by this point, with the cheeks still round but the chin squaring charmingly, the happy expression exactly the same.
"Then he turned... twelve. And I met..." An uneasy look crossed over her face.
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Post by Adrian Veidt on Jun 30, 2010 23:58:31 GMT -5
The allusion to Adrien's mental state sat uncomfortably with Adrian, and combined with Adrien's malnourished childhood it seemed frighteningly likely. Adrian had been feeling gradually more guilty and disgusting for being with Adrien since the news had leaked to the public and been regurgitated back in the form of scathing gossip commentary and falling stocks. This was just another layer of horror.
"He told me-"
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Post by Adrien Baillon on Jun 30, 2010 23:59:30 GMT -5
She looked at him slowly, looking scared.
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Post by Adrian Veidt on Jul 1, 2010 0:16:31 GMT -5
"Enough that I could guess, at least."
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