LeBlanc / 4 - wound

[qdesjardin]

4 – wound

Swain's wound is a geyser, seeping through the white towel Lulu tries holding down on him. His blood trickles down, frighteningly without any sign of stopping.

On the bare, backstage floor, their maester is lain down. Most of the stage staff have left, while a few stay by to deliver more towels for Swain's bleeding.

"This is veddy strange.." Heimerdinger goes, seeing the expanding pool of blood. "Now normally, the bleeding should be recessing by this point, but he is bleeding just like when he was first hit. Get the towels out of the way, I want to see."

Lulu brushes the stained towels away.

It's a very mean wound. In that dark red hole, a canyon of severed skin, muscle and fractured bone. Even looking at it makes LeBlanc wince inside – she imagines the kind of pain Swain bears, and the fact that he isn't moaning, or showing any sign of his hurting on his face. Just his eyes staring out at everyone, while his mouth is too weak to talk.

"That silver arrow.." Heimerdinger muses. "It's an anti-coagulant – it prevents the normal blood-clotting process with open wounds. We've got to stop his bleeding, and fast! Lookit, he's going pale!"

From aside, Renton watches the scene unfold – the members of the Black Rose flitting about, trying to find a suitable option to save their Swain. Why don't they just get him to the hospital?

LeBlanc sips from her bottle of chrysanthemum tea; she's parched, and delivering all those lines theatrically, it just takes something out of you after the excitement of it wears off. She paces about on the floor, half-glancing at Swain and Heimerdinger, half-focused on her own thoughts about tonight, and the immense pressure she's felt, up to now.

Then she notices, on the sidelines, that boy, standing hesitantly – he was with her from that skit; what's he doing here?

"Urhm.." he goes, scratching his neck. "I.. I'm sorry if I'm intruding where I don't belong. But.. I.." How would he explain this? She's glancing at him, like he's stolen one of her possessions.

"What is it do you want?" she goes.

"I.. don't have any place to go." He lets his glance fall upon Lulu, who's returning from the hallways, a potion in her hand. Then he looks back at LeBlanc, her face apparently impartial, but her eyes studying him. "I mean, I.. I can't go back home. If I do-- I'll be arrested and put into jail, for five years."

"Whoever's heard of someone getting arrested for returning home?" She's heard news stories of police acting in very silly manner, like when they fined that third-grader kid for 'unauthorised wiretapping' when he was just wanting to record his bullies, taunting cruel words. Though LeBlanc senses that this boy here, before her, he is quivering – he was in the midst of it all, seeing the blood spurt out of Swain like that. It is not something you'd imagine a young boy like him to just shrug off – she's seen much worse herself.

Renton just wants to tell her, 'It's a long story,' what with the house arrest, his teacher.. but he gets the sense it would be on the trite side. So he tells her instead, "I don't want to go back there. I know it is crazy.. and I'm not an obsessed fanboy or anything, but I want to come with you, LeBlanc.. please. I laid my eyes on you, and I know, you are one of the most prettiest women I've seen. I've got no place else to turn to, and I don't know what else to do."

Lulu applies her anti-coagulant concoction onto Swain's wound, and he breaks his stoic silence in an utterance of pain – the blood that comes out noticably congeals, and Lulu gives him a thumbs-up. "You'll be just fine!" she daintily says.

"Do you mean.." LeBlanc goes, raising an eyebrow, "you have no friends where you could stay at? You can't rent a room in a loft for a few days?"

Lulu and Heimerdinger turn to Renton now, interested in the conversation.

"I.. friends?" Renton gulps. He feels like he's pulling his words out of a rabbit's hat. "I do have some friends.. I was recording your show, so a friend of mine could watch along too.. but it's not that.. I can't stay here. See, it's that.. I'm supposed to be at home, because I'm under house arrest--"

"Oh.." Lulu mutters, whispering to Heimerdinger. "He's going to get into trouble with the police!"

"—and.. I punched my French teacher, last month, so that's why I'm in house arrest," Renton rambles. "And my teacher's here, right now, waiting for me outside.."

LeBlanc nods. "He knows you're here? He's going to bring you to the police.."

"No.. no, he'll threaten to bring me to the police if I don't come with him, to my house – explain to my mother what I'm doing over here. She'll freak out.."

She glances upward, in thought.

"That sounds like quite a predicament, boy!" Heimerdinger goes. "You've punched him, and he's got every reason on his side to--"

"He's a bum," Renton goes. "Man, you should have seen him when he nabbed me outside the washrooms – he's like, 'I got your ass, Renton! You're playing by my rules tonight!' And I punched him because he pushed me so hard that day, insulting my father like that when I just wasn't even prepared for the finals.."

"Your ankle bracelet," LeBlanc goes. "How did you.."

A beat. "My friend showed me how to disable the modem," Renton says, pulling up his pant leg, showing the bracelet light, still green.

"Right – listen.. Ren-- what's your name? Renton?"

"Mhm."

"Renton--" LeBlanc says his name again, getting used to the taste of it-- "I think I can try having a reasonable chat with your French teacher, see if we can't work something nice out. I hope you haven't gotten a false impression of the French from him, he sounds like quite a jerk to me – not to sound judgemental of him, but French.. it's quite nice. And not all French people are like him, or like me or dear Lulu here even--"

Lulu tips her nightcap at Renton. "Pleased to meet you."

"But so you know," LeBlanc continues, her eyes reflecting over, "it is not a matter of a person's heritage that they come to be nice people, or not-so-nice. I bet.. just like you find good people at school to be friends with, and some mean bullies too – if you travel the world, you'll find that it's the same in places all over. Kind people, snobby people, the people who like to bring a smile to your face with their silly jokes.. it's just in different ways, different languages and customs. Like.. if you change the region of your Blu-ray player, and you play movies.."

"Yeah, I got it." Renton nods.

/

Whilst Heimerdinger and Lulu keep Swain company, LeBlanc and Renton head out into the foyer. By the snake fountain, M. Fourier is haggling over the phone – he's talking it over with the police, Renton's house arrest.

"Yeah," M. Fourier goes. "That kid is here – I even took pictures of him on the goddamn stage! .. I'm making such a big deal out of this? How-- do you know how humiliated I felt, in that classroom when he punched me? I lose the respect of my students, and my teaching life is going to be hell! They'll be jeering behind my back – it will happen, if I don't make it clear to everyone that I am not to be lightly trifled with! So do something! While you're busy investigating that freak incident on the stage, yes I know, get one of your guys to look for Renton."

"Excuse-moi?" LeBlanc gives him a tap on the shoulder.

"What do you want, can't you see I'm busy here-- oh."

M. Fourier is face-to-face with them. LeBlanc, and that boy Renton. For a moment, he doesn't believe what he's seeing.

The police operator on the other side of the call, you can just hear her saying, "Hello? Hello..?"

Then M. Fourier tells the operator, "I found him, Renton. I'll hold him here for you folks, nice and safe," and he hangs up. "Well, well – Renton! What a pleasant surprise, you have friends in high places looking after you, eh? I'm sure all those other people would be glad to know, they never stood a chance when that raven was fluttering all over the gym.."

"No, that was just purely by chance," LeBlanc goes. "And I am lucky to have met him, instead of someone whose conceited ass needs a nice spanking."

"Are you saying I'm a conceited ass?" M. Fourier crosses his arms. "That's rather presumptuous of you to say, Mme LeBlanc. For all I know, that boy.. he's been feeding you the wildest lies about me! I'm just his French teacher, M. Fourier.. and I taught him this Spring semester. He's been zoning out in my classroom, every day, and I try to get him to wake the hell up, pay even the smallest ounce of attention to learning French – he had the audacity to try and bullshit his way out in my oral finals..!"

LeBlanc raises her hand up, silencing him in his tracks. "You are.. where did you learn French, if I might ask?"

"I learned it in class too! And the teacher who taught me, he was my inspiration – if you knew how it felt, that connection with a long line of historical lineage.. of what it means to be a true Frenchman." You can see his face beaming with a sort of pride.

"Oh. In class?" LeBlanc asks. "I would have guessed otherwise.. I never learned French in that sort of institution, M. Fourier – I learned it everywhere else, on the streets, the movies.. the people around me. I would have been bored silly if I had to learn the language.. sitting by one of those desks, watching the teacher pace back and forth over the blackboard, as if he were a pendulum lulling his students' eyes to sleep."

Renton is beaming. What she says is actually true, and she put it best.

M. Fourier barely manages to conceal his frothing anger. "Ohh.. I just hate it! I wish I were in Quebec or France, so I could teach in that wonderous language without a hitch! But nooo.. there's no nice teaching jobs over there, and I just have my tenure at this school, and nobody gives a damn about the beauty of French! Nobody appreciates it, what I try and do for all my students.."

"Then I would suggest, show them the interesting French movies in-class--" LeBlanc suddenly hears Twisted Fate mumbling into her earpiece, and she puts a hand over her ear to listen.

"I lost the fella," Twisted Fate goes. "Disappeared without a trace. All I know is that he knocked out an usher on his way, and the usher ain't seen nothing. Just some well-dressed albino with a suitcase. I think I'll scope things out some more – how's Swain doing?"

"He's fine, Heimerdinger's looking after--"

"Oh, he'll pull through," Heimerdinger interrupts. "It's just what he's been hit with, it's an anti-coagulant – it stopped us from stopping the bleeding properly; whoever's after us must be quite determined.."

"We better keep ourselves on our toes," Twisted Fate goes. "It's sure betting that fella will be trying for Swain again soon, if not for us all the next day."

LeBlanc turns her atttention back to M. Fourier.

"What is.. who was that?" he asks.

"That was Twisted Fate – we're investigating the occurance." LeBlanc takes off her earphone. "But right now, if I could say anything about getting your students really interested with French.. you show them a taste of exquisite French beauty. The beautiful movies made in French, all the beautiful poetry in French.. the kind of French feelings you don't usually find anywhere else.

"If you know – in China, they attempted to replicate Paris, so nobody is tempted to leave the country. I don't quite remember the city's name, but.. even though they have the streets, the building architectures.. a replica of the Eiffel Tower too, it just isn't French. Because it lacks the proper French spirit needed to enliven it; it's like if you listen to someone singing the words to your favourite song, but they don't really know the music."

M. Fourier is thinking. "But.. aren't I already showing everyone how being French is? I mean, I tell them about the grand histories behind the culture, and the French heritage--"

"Screw that," LeBlanc says. "Nobody really likes those long, drolling history lessons, and I'm bored of them myself – just show everyone first-hand what being French has to offer, right here, right now." (Like a French kiss, hehe.)

He sighs. "I guess.. I guess you're right – I mean, who wouldn't feel excited about going to the movies?"

"M. Fourier?" Renton steps forward. "I'm sorry I punched you in the face.."

"Yeah.. that was a bit harsh of me, mentioning your father like that. But you'll still have to answer to the police too, because I'm not the one administering your house arrest terms."

LeBlanc glances at Renton – what is she going to do with the boy now, let him go to the doges? Maybe if.. she can take accomodations for him--

"No, he'll answer to me," LeBlanc goes, taking Renton by the shoulder. "I'll be looking after him, not you or the police – until I get him back home with his mere."

"Huh? What?" M. Fourier frowns. "No, you can't do that-- I'll hold onto the boy! Who knows what you could do to him.. even though he's in trouble, I'm responsible for his well-being and safety." He tugs back at Renton.

"Waaagh~!" So Renton is in a tug of war (of sorts) between the two. "Let me go!"

"LeBlanc," M. Fourier goes, "you better do what he says, let go of him right this instant—!"

Renton can smell both their perfumes; the sweet hues of LeBlanc, and the professional shades of M. Fourier.

"Both of you let go of me!" Renton shouts, panting – he shrugs off their hands, and puts a few steps distance from them. It's a little funny, how even the grown-ups can get downright petty.

"Renton, it's either me or her, or you face the police alone!" M. Fourier goes. "Now you better choose!"

LeBlanc sighs. "I won't goad you, Renton. At your age, you can make your own choices – and that you decided to come here to our one and only showing tonight.. instead of lingering at home, I think that is a very adult decision."

Inside, it makes Renton smile, what she's said. It is like a feeling being lifted off his shoulders, that he'd get into trouble in the end. Sometimes, you just have to trust your own gut instinct, what you really want, even if it means breaking free from what others expect of you.

So he steps by her side.

".. you'll regret this, Renton!" M. Fourier jeers. "You think you can just run away from your own responsibilities? Run away, into some damn faerytale existence? Ohh.. it'll all catch up to you, boy! If not now, then soon! Your world will come crashing down, tumbling into splinters!"

But Renton couldn't give much more of a damn, what his French teacher has to say, as he walks away with LeBlanc back over to the backstage.