Early hours, 21st January, 1894 — 8th Arrondissement, Paris

He couldn’t help but think of her when he thought of Paris, or think of her without thinking of Paris. All those romantic delusions she had had about travelling and seeing the city for herself – hopes she had spilled out to him before they even knew each other at all – and here he was, dealing with her miserable letters instead.

Anger had fuelled him here, he thought, that burning resentment at her leaving: he had studied her map, enchanted the portkey, waited until it was late, after midnight one night, and thudded down along the Champs-Élysées before he could talk himself out of it. (Somewhere deep down, Kris knew this was – embarrassing? deranged? – and the only mercy was that of anyone in the world, Poppy Dashwood was possibly the only person who wouldn’t think so.)

This was stupid. He had tried last night, with no luck. Tonight he thought he had found the right house – he had a view of it where he was loitering on the street, waiting to see if any shadows crept out from its shuttered rooms – and he ran through her words again, as if to convince himself this wasn’t stupid. I’ve taken to stealing out in the earliest hours of morning, before anyone is awake, to stroll along the cobbled streets. No. If anyone was stupid here, it was her – what kind of trouble was she going to get herself into being reckless like that?

He tried to ignore the leap in his chest when he spotted the figure, five foot nothing and light as air stepping onto the cobblestones; he let her go for a few paces, half-interested to see where she would go this time, before he quickened his strides and grasped her by the arm.

---

Poppy knew better than to be sneaking out alone to explore a city she was unfamiliar with in the wee hours of morning. She did, truly, but since when had that ever stopped her from doing anything? The freedom of it was what she craved. Being outside of her Aunt’s watchful, hawkish gaze was liberating, especially since all Aunt Viola had been doing as of late was trying to not-so-subtly ensure she was having a good time. They weren’t here to hunt for a husband, and as a result her aunt seemed a little unsure of what to do with herself other than dote. Poppy appreciated the effort, dearly, but… the morning respite had become necessary. (Besides, wasn’t liberté exactly one of the three French tenants utterly necessary to uphold? She was only being respectful of the local culture, after all.)

She’d made a friend some few weeks ago. His name was Jean and he was the most adorable little Frenchman she’d come across yet. His English was « très mauvais » but Poppy had managed to teach him a few easy phrases. In return, her French was becoming more colloquial and they shared a baguette on the bank of the Seine most mornings. This morning Poppy had a small gift for Jean. It was an old, dilapidated English grammar booklet that she’d dug up in one of the markets. She’d cast some few spells to tidy it up and added her own flair to it, hoping it might help him continue his English studies after she left.

Sneaking out of the townhouse and letting it click shut behind her quietly, Poppy leaned up against the wooden frame and pulled her hood up over her curls. She’d taken to leaving her hair down in the mornings. It was much less stress not to have to worry about rouge strands. She then tucked her little parcel close and pulled her wand, not quite stupid enough to walk around at this time unarmed. (She’d been through a scuffle once at the racetrack and had no desire to repeat the experience with her knight in shining armor a country away.)

Poppy had only managed to go a few feet from the townhouse, tracing her normal route towards the boulangerie, when something - or someone - suddenly grabbed her by the arm. This was it. This was the reason she wasn’t supposed to wander about alone. (She’d been lucky up until now.) A shriek bubbled up through her windpipe, and the diminutive brunette made to wrench away, whirling on her assailant with a decisive “stupefy!” He - because it was, in fact, a man - flew away from her and landed some few feet back in a heap.

In the resulting chaos, Poppy’s hood flew back and her parcel dropped to the ground but she hardly noticed as hazel-blue eyes blew wide. She knew this particular assailant. Tucking her wand away quickly, she ran over and dropped to his side, hands hovering over face and torso unsure of what to do. “Kristoffer!” She exclaimed, half apologetic half in shock. “What are you doing here?!”

---

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Kristoffer had opened his mouth to say something – sly, witty, lewd; he wasn’t sure – to her, but he didn’t have the chance. As if he were some petty thief or attacker, she pointed her wand at him before he had time enough to blink.

The next thing he knew, he was on his back, cobbled street digging into his backside and aching more as he came to, out of the spell. He groaned. And here was Poppy, her face swimming above him like it sometimes did in the early morning when he thought about her, half between sleep and waking – usually irksome and alluring and comforting, somehow, all at once.

It was much the same in this moment, only Kristoffer greeted her with a whining groan instead of anything more eloquent. “What are you doing, trying to kill me?” he hissed, although the annoyance didn’t make it to his eyes. Hopefully it was still too dark, in the early morning shadows, for her to see them soften. He was – supposed to be – angry at her, generally. “Is this what you’ve been doing in Paris, hm, attacking people willy-nilly in the streets?” Grief could give people some liberty to be a pain, but that seemed a little too far.

If he didn’t answer her question directly, it was because he realised he didn’t have any good answer. I wanted to see you wasn’t any excuse at all.

---

As she knelt beside him, hands hovering and face pinched in concern, Poppy couldn’t help the floundering of her heart in her rib cage. She was alarmed still, yes, adrenaline at full tilt— but she was also incredibly pleased and the realization of his being here to alleviate some of her misery, either on purpose or by mere coincidence. (And while she was not so blind as to really suppose this was all a mere coincidence, she liked to give him the benefit of the doubt in case that was preferable.) The fact of the matter was that he was here and her heart was all the lighter for it.

A short laugh bubbled up in response to Kristoffer’s quip, and one hand came up to cover her mouth because it seemed rude to laugh at his suffering. Her free hand came to settle on his chest gently and Poppy scoffed, making to brush blonde bangs out of his eyes.

“You’ve caught me then,” she admitted playfully. “I’ve since left England to become the next Scarlet Pimpernel— or rather, Crimson Coquelicot.” She made to roll her eyes. Then, a touch more shyly, and only because it was partially for his sake that she’d been practicing: “My defensive skills have improved however, you’ll note. I won’t be needing any more knights in shining armor around the racetrack this season.” Poppy’s smile melted into something softer, quieter. She liked the idea of his always being there to protect her, despite how silly it was, but she was also happy to prove to him she didn’t need it. It was a point of pride, one she hoped he would share with her. Poppy Dashwood was no damsel in distress! (Though she was happy to feign as much for any other man, she realized somewhat irritably.)

Shooing aside those thoughts, she sat back on her heels and only just realized her hands still lingered about his face. Blushing slightly, Poppy pulled back. “Are you alright?” She asked, remiss in not having confirmed earlier.

---

---

There were certain elements of this moment to be surprisingly grateful for, Kristoffer was finding – her hand on his chest, the other at his forehead, oddly tender for what she had just done. If he wasn’t aching all over, he would have been picturing them in bed, waking up together –

“I’ve noted,” Kristoffer agreed, in a grumbling tone. But – “Good. Now you’re a danger to everyone you meet, as long as you don’t let your guard down.” For his joking, he shot her a weak smirk; but it was good, because she had always been something of a liability, and he had never been well-suited to shining knighthood. He had always been – too selfish for that. Maybe she wasn’t wrong to have been shooting spells at him. He didn’t know that he was here for anything good.

He hauled himself up to a sitting position, since she had extricated her hands from his face already, and he was gaining no other benefits from being sprawled on the Parisian street. He leaped up roughly, never mind the protests of his body, so that he could be the one to offer her a hand up.

At the same time as that: “Better than you’ve been, by the sounds of it,” Kristoffer replied to her last question, unkindly.

---

The look that settled on Kristoffer’s face in response to her quip was not one that Poppy was keen to forget. It was soft around the edges, a smirk and yet still something less abrasive than that all at once. He was here and he was teasing and he was normal, and even she felt normal for the first time in what had to be months. It was a relief, if nothing else, and for her part, Poppy merely scoffed playfully, giving her big hazel eyes a roll.

(Of course he agreed, of course he noticed— because he was her friend and at the end of the day, probably the only person who truly knew her. Or knew what it was she needed, when she needed it.)

Poppy realized the sentiment in a belated, half dazed kind of way. It settled like a stone in the space between her vertebrae, not to be forgotten but not demanding enough to be bothered with in that moment. She accepted the hand that was offered and gave another small scoff, less playful perhaps than before as her inquiry to his well-being was rebuffed. “That’s not a very gallant thing to say to a lady,” she admonished. “Perhaps next time I won’t worry enough to inquire.” A lie, if ever there was one.

Standing to her full height once more, which still did not extend far beyond Mr. Lestrange’s shoulder, Poppy gracefully made to release his hand, not realizing just how close they really were. Hazel hues flickered up to blue and in a moment all brief chagrin vanished. Poppy let her free hand settle once again ever so lightly on Kristoffer’s arm as she resisted the urge to embrace him fully. “How… how are you here?” She heard herself ask.

It was a silly, stupid thing she knew, likely to startle him away like a stray cat very nearly coaxed out of hiding. He had ventured forth to see her, wasn’t that enough? They needn’t talk about why or how. They never did in the past and they likely shouldn’t (wouldnt?) now but… the question was niggling at her. “Doesn’t your family miss you? Won’t they wonder where you’ve gone?”

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She couldn’t be a complete wreck, an entirely lost cause, if she could still roll her eyes at him like that. And she had called him not very gallant. Kristoffer wasn’t hurt by this, because he expected it from most people – but Poppy, Poppy, was usually more patient with him. She saw him through a rosier-lensed vision than anyone else ever had before.

But not right now, because she was. Hurting. He knew this. He had known this before he came. He didn’t know what to do about it; he wouldn’t know how to start with that. But following that comment, she had softened to her usual self, or he had felt himself recoil and relent, or they had met each other’s gaze and that had melted the rest of it away.

Something caught in his throat at her question, because he was too focused on her hand on his arm to come up with a good excuse. “I don’t have chaperones around every corner to coddle me,” Kris protested casually – not his younger sisters, not his cousins, not great-uncle Lucius. People had better things to do than to care about him, and he could explain this away as working, and no one would care to ask his office about it anyway.

“And I haven’t come to run away with you,” he added, meaningfully. Poppy might be inclined to stay away forever, to go fleeing through Europe to escape her grief, but – he had limits. He wasn’t going to follow her forever, just because he missed having her around. “Maybe I wanted to visit Paris, that’s all.” Without telling anyone. Before the sun had risen. He had been sure of it before he said it, so he almost needn’t have bothered: of course she would know that was a lie. “I don’t like letters,” he added abruptly, still eyeing her face, searching for any small details that might show him how she really was or felt: whether she was suffering, was sleeping properly, was getting better or not.

So now he was here, and if she had anything else to say, she would have to say it to his face.

---

Her fingers were still pressed gently against Mr. Lestrange’s arm, Poppy too distracted (or desperate maybe) to keep him close, to be sure he was not one of her vivid hallucinations. It was too good to be true almost, the perfect distraction to allow her to forget for a moment what it was that had been making her sneak out like this at the break of dawn. What it was she’d fled England from and could still not manage to escape…

If a small nod bobbled her head up and down, it wasn’t because Poppy understood. Chaperones or not, the liberties afforded to gentlemen could not possibly stretch so far, could they? Even Anthony, with all his hopping from France and back, was sure to mention to his Mama when he was due in either place. Could Kristoffer’s relationship be so different— distant, cold— that he didn’t care to inform his family of his whereabouts? (Or worse, was he ashamed to be here, with her?) Either way, it wasn’t Poppy’s place to ask and she would not pry. The former seemed none of her business and the latter, well… she tried not to think about that facet of their relationship, ever.

As for the bit about running away, she felt a mischievous little grin tug at the corner of her lip— not enough for a real smile to bloom forth, but enough to hint at one. “Won’t you?” She asked, as if suddenly seized by the idea. What a fantastic plan. What an easy way out! “Running away really does seem like the best alternative but—” but one could not outrun grief. All playfulness faded. Poppy caught the remainder of that statement in her throat and let her gaze drift towards their shoes. It was a ridiculous notion. One she’d come to regret in the end.

At Kristoffer’s comment about letters, she looked back up, something twisting painfully in Poppy’s expression. Poppy knew that Mr. Lestrange was not one to write to, not like her other past suitors and certainly not like her family. She still wasn’t sure what had compelled her to reach out to begin with other than the fact that she’d missed him. She still missed him, even here and now. Kristoffer was the only person she felt could possibly understand… The only person she wanted to dissolve into tears in front of and finally let loose the beast inside her chest. He wasn’t the type to pat her awkwardly on the back and promise everything would be alright. Perhaps that was why, in the end, Poppy wanted him here so badly.

The feeling was welling in her chest, swelling to the size of one of those great rubber balloons that carried people fair distances. For one as small as Poppy then, the weight of it was crushing. She couldn’t help as the strangled pain twisted and curled into something both appreciative and devastated— grateful, so grateful, for his appearance, but also reminded now in full of the loss she’d suffered to bring him here. Tears began to pool at the corner of her eyes and Poppy abandoned all caution to the wind. She closed the space between them and buried her face in his shoulder, knowing full well she’d never have the same opportunity to indulge her grief once they moved on, once she was forced back under her mask of pretense. He smelled of sandalwood and warmth, and the fabric of his cloak was soft against her cheek. Poppy sucked in a short breath to keep from crying and pressed her small, cold nose against his neck. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. For writing to you, for collapsing like this, for not being able to keep it together. Maybe, even, for worrying you.

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He wished she had been herself enough to finish that sentence. A less-broken Poppy would have carried that notion too far for her own good, even as a joke; she would be playful and continue to be so playful that Kris would have a hard time not believing her in it. She had a way of doing that to him. Impressing her thoughts and ideas and even her (impossible) good opinions of him aloud and incessantly, until her worldview became as good as the real one.

He depended on that Poppy, he realised. He couldn’t for the life of him say why, but it was as though he needed her.

So he was too taken aback by himself to protest to her flinging herself into his arms, pressing her face into the space between his shoulder and his neck. Sorry, she had the temerity to say. As if she owed him any apologies at all. What did he know about grief? His parents were gone. But he wasn’t sure that he had ever loved his parents enough to miss them.

“Don’t leave me like that again,” Kristoffer demanded in a not-so-authoritative mumble, his arms snaking tightly around her. “I missed you.”

Which he supposed meant he must –

---

Poppy didn’t know what, if anything, she expected from Kristoffer. Had she half-heartedly hoped he’d play into her suggestion to run away? Had she deep down expected him to rebuke her badly enough to crush this growing attachment? In the end perhaps it didn’t matter because he did neither, instead just letting her collapse into his chest. Poppy felt the overwhelming urge to blubber continue to rise, and when the gentleman did at last respond, it was a final nail in the coffin.

Tears began to stream down the brunette’s cheeks, no longer caught in the fray of her eyelashes. They beaded against the fabric of his cloak before taking the time to soak his shoulder, and all the while— all Poppy could think was how badly she wanted this to be her reality. For him to be the one she could depend upon, call on, and potentially even escape to whenever she needed.

(And maybe it was already true. He certainly had no reason to be here, holding her, in the dark, frigid, pre-dawn, and in Paris of all places. But that wasn’t the reality that had flit through her mind as fingers curled tighter into his lapel.)

“I missed you too,” Poppy hear herself whisper so quietly she wasn’t even sure she meant for him to hear. “I don’t want to ever leave you again. I want—” Hazel-grey hues shut to the world and Poppy sucked in a shuddering breath. She wanted the impossible.

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She was crying, and he couldn’t bear it. (He still didn’t understand this instinct – it was not very familiar to him, because he did not make a habit of caring about other people and their emotions and their stupid problems. Only Poppy wasn’t other people. Poppy had somehow folded herself into a different category, where her emotions had become his emotions, and her problems were his problems.

He didn’t know if he liked being so aware of this, but any doubts or qualms escaped him at Poppy’s murmuring, which gave voice to things Kristoffer was almost sure he had imagined. She had missed him. (He had never said it, and no one had ever said they missed him, either.) And she didn’t want to leave him. There was no way for this to be a good thing, was there? But he wasn’t thinking about the problems this might cause him, or the multitude of ways in which this wouldn’t work – and she hadn’t finished what she wanted, but he wanted to say it. What did it matter? They were alone, they were in Paris, there was no one here who would care what they said or did, for at least a little while. There was a rapidly-flourishing feeling in his chest, some feeling saying fuck you to the rest of the world, that all that mattered to him was her. “I want to be with you, Poppy.” Now, always, in every way. “Let me be with you.”

---

She wanted the impossible.

(But why was it impossible, some small, pointed voice in the back of her mind inquired idly. Was it because of status? Blood? Reputation? And did those things really matter in the end?)

Poppy squashed the thought process before it could manage to take full form. She peeled back just enough to run an embarrassed hand across her cheeks, leaving a warm mark in its wake, but continued to hold just as tightly to Kristoffer’s cloak.

He was responding to the affirmative, a desperate look flashing in brilliant blue eyes. Even in the pre-dawn light they were strikingly beautiful and more expressive than one might imagine on first glance. But Poppy knew. Poppy could read the sincerity radiating off Kristoffer in waves. His energy captivated her and everything inside the diminutive brunette screamed to accept him even as tears continued to dribble.

“Is that a proposal Mr. Lestrange?”

The statement came out half question, half tease, garbled as it was behind her blubbering and half a laugh. Poppy could hardly imagine what she was on about herself, only that she wasn’t sure what he could be asking either. In whatever rational part of her brain remained, she meant it in jest— as an opening quandary for him to explain better what it was he meant. In the very overwhelmingly emotional, wistful, fantastical part of her brain, Poppy couldn’t help but wonder—

She half expected him to just kiss her and let sleeping dogs lie. But on the marginal chance he would resent her for not letting him speak his mind, she held off doing the very same just for a moment.

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Was she joking?

(Did he want her to be joking? Or –)

His eyes blazed for a moment as he looked at her, almost certain he hadn’t heard that right. Or she was hysterical from all the crying and the shock of his coming here, or his urgency, the sincerity leaking out in his voice had been too strange for her, too much, and she was trying to paper over what he had just admitted to cover the awkwardness.

But hadn’t she said it too, I don’t want to ever leave you again?

Kristoffer blinked. We can’t, he was thinking, because he didn’t know how he would ever confess caring for a halfblood, let alone wanting to marry her, to the Lestranges. He was already the least and the last of them, an afterthought; he didn’t need to throw away any status his surname gave him to make himself a laughing-stock too.

He was thinking it, but for some ridiculous reason he couldn’t bring himself to tell Poppy that to her face. He kept looking at her, searching for some way around that reality, some way not to let her down. In the end, he blurted out, heart beating senselessly fast beneath it: “Where’s the church, then?”

He would let Poppy take it as a joke, if she chose this moment to smarten up and come to her senses. No one needed to know he was serious, if she wasn’t.

---

The echo of her own laugh had hardly finished ringing in Poppy’s ears before she was sobering to what she’d asked. For a moment (that felt lighter and less overwhelming than it should have) she let the peal of her own garbled laugh sit like a high in the forefront of her mind. She couldn’t have gotten more dizzy if she’d swallowed a whole gallon of gillywater and yet—

There was an anchor in his ocean blue eyes, emotions swirling like tides, as she felt her breath catch. The life-preserve that was his coat remained between her fingers.

There was something there, something swimming beneath the surface that Poppy simply could not place amidst the chaos of this moment. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just force another laugh or lunge forward and swallow the confusion? Yes. Yes, of course. She blinked quickly, lashes damp, and realization dawning. Oh, how silly she’d been. How ridiculous to misunderstand, and perhaps cruel to tease them both. They were friends, that was all. Fingers loosening on his lapels, the brunette felt her cheeks heat as she prepared to find a graceful means of exit to this topic.

But then he spoke and—

This time, the silence rung between them with a shattering stillness that Poppy could not ignore. Her heart skipped a beat and everything she’d been trying to wrap her mind around not mere moments ago blossomed forth like a reality just within reach. Was it really running away? Perhaps, in some light. But the adventure, the thrill of it, was a captivating idea— one that she could not help entertaining for another minute until one, or both of them, inevitably (right?) came to their senses.

“I should think there’s the great cathedral in central Paris and a rather splendid venue in La Madeleine not five blocks from here,” the words came out more an informative, still teasing ramble than any real answer. The actual answer was Gretna Green, only an aparition away if they were truly serious. But Poppy could hardly think of the place without her chest swelling painfully.

It was not running away, she tried to convince herself, when it was so akin to coming home.

Right?

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The silence might have lasted an age, for all Kristoffer had suffered through it. If it was a joke, it had gone down like fucking lead, and if it wasn’t a joke then she was going to profess it as ludicrous a thought as anyone in history could have come up with. Don’t be stupid, she might well have said, whatever had come before; who would ever want to marry you?

He had imagined this answer and internalised it well enough before she actually spoke that Kris needed to blink back his disbelief when she – answered his question plainly instead. (Continuing on the joke, or did she mean it? But who in their right mind would continue to entertain the joke if she wasn’t half-tempted by it... and half-tempted, to Kristoffer’s mind, was tempted enough for him. If she had the smallest inkling of wanting him, of wanting to be with him, of wanting to be his, why shouldn’t he capitalise on it?)

She could be in her right mind tomorrow, he decided, if she liked – as long as she had taken leave of her senses today. Kristoffer tested her further, by dropping all pretensions of joking from his tone, and keeping his gaze squarely on her. If she wanted to drop the idea, let her be the coward and look away first. La Madeleine, then; he would take Poppy’s word for it. “Close enough for me. We’ll need a witness, though,” he explained, “if you’re going to marry me.” He fancied he could bribe the priest to get them in after-hours, and speed through the necessary documents – but he didn’t have anyone he could trust (here or anywhere) as a witness.

They couldn’t tell anyone else about this, though. Not her family, certainly not his – this had to be theirs alone.

---

Poppy was studying Kristoffer’s face for any hint of withdrawal or emotion as the words bubbled between them. This did all feel like just another one of their teasing ‘what if’ scenarios, a big joke, that ached desperately— deep in her chest. They couldn’t be serious because if they were serious then he would have gotten on one knee and asked her properly. He would have— they would have— she would have— but they did, in their own way. Didn’t they? Poppy knew, buried beneath all her nonchalance and talk of friendship, she wanted this. Had wanted it for awhile, but refused to admit as much even though every man was measured against the same unyielding standard: Kristoffer Lestrange.

In that moment she didn’t think of family or friends, hers or his. In that moment, all Poppy could think was—

“Would a child count for a witness?”

Jean, easily 16 or 17 at the very least, would be honoured, she knew, to stand in for them. And if the church would have them, then why not fancy a try? She’d never been married before after all, and what was marriage really besides a whole lifetime of companionship? Poppy could hardly believe she might be so lucky to as to marry someone she actually cared for, lineages and hellions be damned. Because… honestly, despite his things (and everyone had things) Kris Lestrange was the only man she wanted to have as a companion. They could weather whatever it was that might come. Together.

Still—

Poppy paused for only a moment, her hand re-settling on his sleeve. All sense of teasing had dropped from her countenance as well. “…If we are going to do this however,” she said, voice soft and gaze a little bit wistful. “Then… I’d like you to ask properly.” Hazel hues dropped in embarrassment as her cheeks coloured a bright pink but Poppy held fast, her hand curling into a small fist in his lapel. “Please.”

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