I Dream of Disney (One-shots)

Fire in the Court of Miracles [ Clopin Trouillefou x Reader] Part IV

Violins were screaming in her head. It was a mournful sound. 

Though tissue and organ cannot speak, nerve and blood never express, nor can innermost feelings be defined by those fleeting and unsubstantial things we call words, the violin seems able to articulate all of that turmoil. The light flounce of a bow over the neat tendons of string could reflect the delight one has when they spot a dear family member traipsing towards them, perhaps in a comparably delightful setting such as a park of some sort: there would be ducks, children giggling as they played their games, lovers romancing beneath a chestnut tree. Such fond recollections could be summed up by a single trill of a violin. 

 Oh, yes. Such a delicate instrument was the violin. So expressive. 

It was impossible that she could have heard those violins. . . but she could. It happened in a fantastic nightmare, one that sent her reeling, or perhaps it was nightmarish fantasy? It was a thing that, for mere seconds, had lifted her to Heaven - only to let her fall to Hell. 

"Innocent!" Archambeau roared. 

The crowd mimicked his cheer as they raced forwards, but instead of the synchronised chant for death that cried from their throats, violin trills surged through the air like phantom hands that knocked into her so powerfully that she stumbled backwards, but those rough hands that grabbed her could not be robbed of their fresh blood. They forced her up, urging her to her feet and pushing her onto the highest platform until she could no longer make even the smallest movement, lest it is her last.

She must have lost her mind since those violin trills continued as if she had been dissolved in a symphony in her last moments. It was her disbelief that choked her;  made her limbs jelly as the mob prodded the stand on which she was precariously balanced. Even as they tied the dreaded thing around her pale throat, a ghoulish man kissing it sloppily, she could not respond. How could innocence prove her guilty? Among these vagrants, she was a paradox enshrined in skin: her innocence made her guilty, but she had no guilt to provide them with. The Danse Macabre was trilling in her ears and she couldn't stop the music.

"Wait!" She cried, "Please - please, have mercy!"

"Did your father give quarter?" Archambeau roared, "Did your father, the sanctimonious Judge Claude Frollo, ever soften his heart to the screams of sobs of our children? Children," He ground his teeth with hatred, "Do you hear me?  Children so young that they have not yet learnt to utter prayers, or to say the names of their mothers!" 

Piercing her eyes like hot irons, tears beaded in her eyes, as she cried, "Dieu les bénisse!" 

"He claims he is working for a merciful God, but Frollo is a devil incarnate! Death will show you the error of your ways!" Archambeau spat, "Death will show you your wrongdoings." 

The violins were sharp and piercing in her ears, but she couldn't move to block them or even cower. The view of the Court of Miracles was foisted on her as she gazed over the hundreds of hollow, snarling faces who rose their clenched fists to the air with their thumbs tilted downwards, an ageless sign: Death.

"You won't even give me a chance?" The girl screamed over their voices as they malevolently wobbled the gangway, trying to force her to slip, "You won't give me the thing that you wished my father would give to you? You can't wash away the sins of my father with my own blood! You stain your own brick, you tarnish the Court that you hold dear," She swallowed, "My father will come with all he has to attack you. He will break apart the stone on which you stand and pave it with your blood, build it with your bone! His retribution will kill you all!"

Archambeau started forwards furiously and struck her in the face so hard that she almost lost her footing. Colours swirled in her vision as she stumbled, blinded.