SHE'S ALL THAT ➭ SIRIUS BLACK ❨2❩ ✔︎

ACT FIVE, SCENE FIFTEEN

SAINT-VERAN, FRANCE

In her dreams, Sage was a child again, on the verge of turning nine. She was screaming and crying and pounding her fists on whatever surfaces they could find.

"I don't want to go!" She wailed in her native tongue. "I don't want to go live with Nana!"

Her mother, a tall, cold woman with the same dark hair and eyes as her daughter, frowned cruelly. "I don't care. You're leaving. Now. Carson is waiting for you outside. If you won't go on your own, he is under a direct order to drag you to the car."

Carson Capulet, manager of the Fontaine estate, was very much under Adele Fontaine's thumb at this time. She was paying his bills and supplying him with more money than he had ever seen in his life, so for the salary he was being paid, he would do whatever it was she asked, even if it laid outside the responsibilities he was hired to attend to.

Sage didn't know why she was reliving this memory, the day she left Saint-Veran kicking and screaming to go live with her grandmother, who had been, at the time, a distant relative she only saw at Christmas, when the family would travel to Paris for the holiday.

But dream-Sage was still screaming, and she watched in horror as Carson walked through the front door, his violet wizard's robes pristine and wrinkle-free.

"Stop causing a scene!" Adele whispered harshly, clearly embarrassed to see her daughter having the world's worst tantrum in front of the entirety of the household staff and all of her employees.

Adele Fontaine was not good at being a mother; she didn't have the instincts or emotional range for it, and she grew irritated quickly when her three, and then eventually two, children didn't fit into the boxes she'd expected them to fit into. And while a normal mother, one that loved her children, would soothe her child who was so obviously in distress, the thought did not even cross Adele's mind.

She locked eyes with Carson and nodded curtly. "She's not going to go willingly. Take her."

It sounded so menacing, so cruel and unforgiving, that Sage began to cry harder than before as the man wrapped his hands around her upper arms and began to drag her towards the door.

When Julien came racing down the grand staircase, almost tripping at the bottom, Sage thought she had been saved. That Julien, always their mother's favorite, would find a way to talk Adele out of sending her away.

"I assume your bags are already in the carriage?" Adele asked, kinder to her son than she had been to her daughter.

Julien nodded once before turning to his little sister. "Come on, Sage. Stop crying. You'll like it at Nana's. We both will." He promised her with a smile that put her at ease.

Sage sniffled. "You're coming with me? It's not going to be just me and Nana?" The shred of hope that bloomed in her chest fluttered like a butterfly's wings, and she looked between her mother and brother for a moment.

"Good lord, just go. Your grandmother is expecting you by sunset." Adele said, and she shut her eyes and massaged the area between her eyebrows. "If you aren't out of this house by the time I open my eyes, I will have Carson carry you both out."

At the time, and even for years after that day, Sage couldn't understand what possessed her mother to send her children away, or why her father wasn't there to see them off.

But in the dream, Sage had a different view point, as if she was watching her younger self get dragged away into the carriage. So even after she was out of the house, she could still see the foyer.

Adele Fontaine sighed when her children had finally left, the door shut behind them. She turned away from the front door and looked up at the top of the stairs, where a man who was not Andre Fontaine stood, his shoulders back and posture perfect.

"They don't know?" The man asked in French, but his accent was different. More...English. It sounded like a non-native speaker's solid attempt at getting the pronounciation right.

Adele shook her head. "I had no choice. It was either send them away to live with Andre's mother or have them find out about the affairs, about you." She paused, expression changing from a frustrated, tired one to the calm, cool, and collected facade she wore around those outside of her inner circle. "It was necessary. I'd rather have you and live peacefully than have them find out, tell their grandmother, and get us written out of the will."

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