Foes, Friends and Favours (Gus <3)

[MYLÈNE LACOQUINE]

The main market of Paris was not a place for the faint-hearted, that much was for sure. Booths over booths, smells over smells, shouts over shouts, it was a heaving mass, a mirror of society and basically a big pot of everything under the sun mixed together. And Mylène loved it. You couldn’t help but feel alive the minute you stepped on the market place and had to mind both your steps and your purse. She had been on this market ever since she could remember, ever since she had escaped the factory in the outskirts of Paris as a little worm of eight years. Sometimes she could even see this place again like she had first seen it, somehow present and past overlapping in her sight, as she felt the astonishment, awe and fear of so many people pressed together on so little space. Back then, there had been no visible order to make out for her, just a big mess, but nowadays Mylène had learned exactly to ‘read’ the underlying order of it all. For hours she had sauntered through this place, always in hopes of finding something worthy to steal, be it food or money, and she knew all escape routes and most booths still by heart. The owners might have changed, but some still were the same, and the former street kids had been replaced by a new generation of tricksters and pickpockets.

Knowing most of their tricks all too well, Mylène kept one hand always over the little pouch dangling from a thin leather strap around her waist, almost too thin to be called a belt but serving as one. Therein were her few precious coins and also the ones she had been given by the landlady to get some flour and eggs for a quiche she intended to make later that afternoon, as a special treat for her customers. The Madame surely knew how to make her guests happy, and she sometimes joked: ‘It’s nawt yer pretty face, My, that keeps ‘em returnin’, it’s me tartes and quiches an’ other lil treats!’ Mylène, as much as she liked to argue, did know better most of the time to exploit the Madame’s mood too much to actually start and talk back to her for too long, and so she only gave a sassy eyeroll to these comments. What did she care why the boys kept returning and had made the ABC café their little safe haven, she surely didn’t complain!

Her senses alert like she had learned it in the long years on the street, she approached a woman selling eggs from a large basket and made her oders, when suddenly she felt a prickling at the nape of her neck. Trouble… possible danger… this prickling had always warned her when the eyes of a constable or guardsman were on her just as she was about to nick something from somewhere. It had been a clear sign of: leg it, something’s afoot! But now? Why should she still listen to it? She was an ‘honest’ girl now, buying instead of stealing, and constables could watch her now all they wanted, as long as they didn’t start calling things after her. And yet the prickling didn’t go away… that someone was still watching her, and every fiber in her ached to turn and look, or even walk away. But stubborn as she was Mylène stood her ground as the market woman now made a few comments about the weather.

[gustave]

For Sargent Desjardins it had been a fairly rough day, a day characterised as ever by the antagonism of the people, the animosity of the rich and of course the yearning for a hearty glass of good brandy and a puff on his pipe. His heart however yearned for something, anything to allow him a proper reason for waking his huge form and shaking away the sleep. Anything other than the numbing feeling that even despite his love and respect for law and order, that enforcing it wasn't his true calling. Unlike his friend Javert, Gustave had only a limited amount of tolerance in regards to being despised and disliked, it was no unwelcome feeling. On the contrary he had, had his fair share of scraps and fights during his time in the Napoleonic Army. He'd also felt the hatred of the occupied peoples, stones and bricks had been thrown at him though the attackers rapidly thread when faced with the anger of the French Veterans they had been throwing things at. But during his time in the army, Gustave had felt as if he was right. As if the things he had done and he was ashamed that he had done, had been for the right reasons of course it hadn't. Or so he had been informed that, that was what he must believe.

But in this time of differing opinions and radical beliefs. Who was to tell Gustave Desjardins, Warrior of France and Master of War what to believe and what not to believe?

He was patrolling with several constables, all of them mean looking men who Gustave had selected to accompany him on his patrols. Gruff veterans the whole bunch of them and all four of the police officers had the melancholic coldness that indicated that they had killed before and if they had to they would take life again. Gustave waved his men on to begin their walk around the square and a few surrounding alleys as he had seen something that had interested him.

Mylene Lacoquine, the spritely, interesting and flighty girl he remembered with fondness of course, that fondness had once been abject hatred for the girl thief, part of a group that Gustave had followed and eventually broken. He could remember it clearly and he also remembered the girl's face how she had ran, flipped, skipped and jumped away from him that the even the extremely able-bodied Sargent at that time a mere Constable had trouble keeping up with her and eventually lost her trail.

Over the years they had fostered an amiable friendship, based partly on the Sargent's unwillingness to imprison her as she was a girl and he always had a fondness for street-children but he always made sure to throw her a sous or two when he passed her in the street. He had that same soft and slightly kindly smile on his face as he walked towards her hands clasped behind his back, eyeing the girl who had once been so prone to running. He spoke in an official tone tinged with the roughness that was noticeable and unique to him. "What seems to be the problem here?"

[MYLÈNE LACOQUINE]

The feeling of someone watching her intensified with every moment, and Mylène’s muscles already contracted, begging her to either turn around and fight or flee, but since she didn’t allow herself either of these options, her right hand cramped around the basket she was holding instead, until her knuckles showed white. Again and again she told herself that she had nothing to fear anymore… even though that wasn’t even completely true. The latest run-in with a few constables had shown her that you often were judged still for what you had been and done, and not by what you were presently doing. Once a thief, always a thief. The egg selling woman gladly was apparently not realizing anything of Mylène’s inner struggle, but kept on chatting happily, apparently glad she had found such a wonderful listener that would not interrupt her babbling.

“Ye know, all this rain, it’s really makin’ people sad and moody. Me husband for one, ‘M so glad it’s not rainin’ today, or else I’d get hell again for not sellin’ ‘nuf eggs. Ye ‘ave someun at home, dahlin’?” Mylène was pulled from her reverie by these last words, feeling the anticipation in the following since. Apparently the woman also was of the curious sort, and she was eyeing the girl now with a knowing smile. “Um… no, actually”, she hastily replied and then added with a grin: “Thank God, them eggs ‘re for me Madame, not for me own home. No one naggin’ there ‘bout anything ‘cept lateness maybe!” And even that had be ruled out lately, since somehow the Madame seemed to want her to ‘savour’ her life or youth or something like that. She had dropped those hints and winks, which had made Mylène wonder. Just because she was spending time with the ‘dashin’ youn Messieurs Estudiatin’, didn’t mean there was anything to it. Probably the Madame didn’t even know how serious the ABC friends had become about the change they wanted to bring about, and she had no idea about the new headquarter that prevented them to spend as much time as before in the café.

But before the woman could reply anything to Mylène’s confession, she suddenly stiffened as well and a very neutral expression entered her face. A second later a voice rose behind Mylène. Even though she had been waiting for something like that, it was the voice itself that made her actually wince. For it was HIS voice. A voice that had ellicited respect and a certain kind of fear in every gamin and gamine that wasn’t completely crazy. Desjardins… Gustave Desjardins, though there was not really something garden- or flower-like about him. So she had been right in her flight and fight instincts… and the wince was partly due to remembering the heavy blows he head often dealt towards her when he caught her stealing. It hadn’t happened often, Mylène had a certain fame after all, but when it had happened… ouch.
And yet, it was peculiar, she also couldn’t help the smile that tugged at her lips as she turned to face him. “Monsieur Le Marteau!” she exclaimed, using the nickname "The Hammer" she had invented for him years and years back. He really deserved that one… with his hammer fist. “The problem is the rain Sir”, she then explained sassily, winking at the woman in front of her. “For it makes the eggs moody, and moody eggs make for bad tartes and quiches”