Who: Marguerite St. Just and Percy Blakeney What: Actually discussing the whole shared dream thing after Marguerite has a particularly troubling one. Rest TBD When: Middle of the night, mid-November Where: Percy's apartment Warnings: Lots of emotions. SO MANY EMOTIONS. Status: Complete
Marguerite was a woman ruled by her emotions, and those emotions could range from joy, love, anger all the way to fear. Right now, she was being ruled by fear, by panic. She had come to accept the sensations of how real the Dreams were. They were upsetting, especially as of late but there had been hope. What she had thought true was a ruse. Percy still loved her. In the Dreams, at least. Who knew here. Those weren’t things they had really discussed, crossover or not. She had no idea what was happening here. All she knew was that her feelings went deeper than the dreams and it terrified her.
But this time, she woke with a strangled sob. She had seen him beheaded. She was being led to her own execution, with Armand to follow and she felt lost. All hopes for a second chance ruined because of Chauvelin. Even now in her apartment in Anaheim, Marguerite could feel the weight crushing her, making it impossible to breathe. Just as she had felt when she had seen Armand thrashed for daring to love.
Shaking, she got up and put a jacket and shoes on. All she knew in that moment was she needed to see Percy. Know he was okay. Reaffirm that he was alive even if she had seen him die. God she couldn’t breathe. She hadn’t had this chance when she had dreamt of Armand’s thrashing, which was why she had called him relentlessly until he answered. And while perhaps she should have tried that instead of this course of action, Marguerite was on autopilot, her fear and panic driving her to leave her apartment in the middle of the night to make sure Percy was alive.
She didn’t care about danger. She didn’t care that this was pretty much insane. She just needed to know. It was a blur getting to his apartment and suddenly she was outside his door, knocking frantically. The actress looked a fright, pale, shaking, out of sorts. But that tended to be a side effect of watching someone get decapitated.
Percy, in contrast, was a man who struggled not to be ruled by his emotions. It was an arduous process and at times, he failed to do so, but most of his life, the entirety of his career, was dependent upon whether or not he could separate his emotions from the case so that he could attack it with logic, detachment and effectiveness.
All of that, his whole nature, was at war with itself because of these dreams and the course of his life since he had come to California. Never expecting to find someone like Marguerite, Percy found himself trying to understand what he felt and what it meant, only to be struck with another blow, with dreaming of her in things that felt so much like memories. The last time they had spoken, Percy had dreamed about proposing to her. Since then, he dreamed of their marriage, had woken up with a wedding band only to be faced with his dream-wife’s betrayal.
Alongside his constant dreams of rescuing people from the guillotine, Percy found himself thinking about that betrayal, about Marguerite, about something she had said to him back in an earlier conversation. Percy remembered telling her that once trust was broken with him, it was hard to be gained back and he took betrayal very deeply. Marguerite had said something about realising some things are more complicated, but not wrapping himself up in that sense of betrayal, even though it wasn’t his, was difficult.
It had been some time since he had dreamed of that, and he had all that time to slowly try to take what she had said to heart. He hadn’t mentioned it, or any of the dreams in truth, to either Armand or Marguerite, unsure of how to broach the subject. While he was still putting the pieces in place, while he was working to make sense of it, it was beneficial to keep the dreams to himself.
Tonight, however, things were not going to follow the same pattern of feigned ignorance.
Woken up in the middle of yet another dream, however novel, by the sound of frantic knocking, Percy got up, pulling a dressing down on before heading towards the door. Maybe it was a combination of tiredness and an aftereffect of still feeling caught in a dream, he pulled the door open without a second thought to see Marguerite standing there looking frightened.
“Marguerite,” he said simply, voice shocked and fearful despite its tired quality. “Come in. What’s wrong?”
It was only after Percy opened the door and invited her in that she realised how ridiculous this was. How completely insane it was to show up at someone’s home in the middle of the night, after not really talking to them in weeks. There was the part of her that worried that whatever had happened in the Dreams had happened for him. But she knew now. She knew he’d been the Pimpernel. She knew he knew about Chauvelin.
Chauvelin.
The guillotine.
Percy’s head falling. Her being next. God, she hadn’t even been this bad when she dreamt of Armand being thrashed. Admittedly he was still alive from that and not beheaded. And even if they had been busy and not talked much, that didn’t change the fact that everything she felt and saw in the Dream had shaken her to her core.
“You still have your head.”
It was a random thing to say, really it probably made no sense, given the time of night and how out of nowhere the comment was. But she couldn’t help it. She managed to keep from crying in relief that Percy was in fact alive and just let that fact sink in to try to and calm her emotions, which really wasn’t something that was easily done.
“I saw you...he… Chauvelin, he used Armand to.. and then he used us as bait to capture you and he….”
She was an actress. She could be whatever was necessary, she could get her words out but in this moment, she was relieved that Percy was alive all the while still feeling the sheer pain and heartbreak from her Dream, the overbearing sensation of loss she hadn’t felt since the death of her parents.
“You died. By the guillotine and I just…”
She just had to make sure he was okay.
“Would you like to join Armand and I for Thanksgiving?”
Because that clearly was the correct question after telling someone you saw them die, but it was an attempt to get herself back together and would undoubtedly be ignored until later on. But it was said and there was nothing she could do about that now.
“I should hope so.” That initial statement seemed almost silly, but with the tension wrapping around them, with the terrified look on her face and simply the fact she was surprised to see him not headless made that comment seem less ridiculous. If Percy hadn’t been dreaming these past few weeks about rescuing people from the guillotine, he would have been confused by the reference to him having his head. As it was, he was afraid that maybe they were out of sync with their dreams and he was caught and kill for what he had done. It reminded Percy of when he had first run into Marguerite in person, when he had been plagued with dreams of his own execution. Somehow, even with that human fear of death, at least he could have the fact he died trying to save people.
Percy couldn’t dwell on that however, not with the way he was more concerned about Marguerite, with the way she was almost stuttering around her words before finally asking him about Thanksgiving. Though he was still trying to understand her, Percy had a feeling that her strange inquiry was less about the literal question and more about the fact that it cycled back around to the real world, not this dream world where she saw him beheaded.
Even if she was trying to come back to the real world, she still made no moves to come inside. Percy helped guide her through the door and closed it behind her.
“To my knowledge, I’m still here. I’m still alive, Marguerite.” His words weren’t pedantic, weren’t mocking. Percy’s tone was calm, he was empathetic. Without really saying anything he put the kettle on and while it was going on the stove, he returned to her side. “I am fine. Are you okay? What can I do?”
It was almost obvious that she was troubled, but he wanted her to give him something to do for her, because seeing her so out of sorts was difficult to see. For now, he disregarded the comment about the upcoming holiday to focus on the more important things.
In the end, that really was the reason for why she asked about Thanksgiving. It was an attempt to ground herself in the here and now. An attempt to note where she was even if it wasn’t responded to. They words served their purpose, though it took Percy having to physically guide her inside that she realized that she hadn’t moved at his invitation. God, was this truly the end? Was she the reason Percy died? That Armand would die after her? She could hear Chauvelin’s smug voice in her head. Now Marguerite, my dear, are you ready to come home? Home to death. Home to the guillotine on her beautiful stage.
“Dieu, I’m sorry. I should have called or… something.” Something that wasn’t showing up half crazed because of panic. Too late now though. All she could say was that there was relief Percy was fine. Of course he was but some of the Dreams were more jarring than the others. Which was why she was still standing until she felt a pressure urging her to sit. It was instinctual to follow the guidance where normally she would be pacing in agitation. Instead she just clenched and unclenched the fabric of her pajama bottoms as she struggled to regain her footing.
“I don’t know…. it’s just so real and I’ve dealt with that. When I dreamt of Armand being thrashed, it was just as real but this one was so much more…” Devastating? No. If Armand had died in the Dream, she would have been inconsolable, and he was set to die after her. But he had still been alive at least. Unlike Percy who had lost his head.
“Armand was arrested and I went to try and get him out… we’re next. I know we are. Chauvelin was leading me to the guillotine.. he was even using the theatre…” Part of her should have asked if Percy had even gotten far enough into the Dreams to know what she was talking about but no. She was just trying to explain, trying to make sense of it all now that she knew she wasn’t in France about to die. “Things were better and now…”