Sacrifice

Title: Sacrifice

Fandom: Noel Streatfeild’s href=\"http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0859978788/qid=1129660843/sr=1-38/ref=sr_1_0_38/701-5117140-6081122\">the Bell Family

Pairing: implied Paul/Jane

Written for: Jon, as always.

It was one thing, having secretly watched Jane practicing and having made up his mind that she ought to be properly trained as a dancer, to shut his books and microscope into a drawer. It was quite another to shut the prospect of being a doctor out of his mind. Paul, without at all meaning to, behaved as though someone had pulled a plug and deflated him, The rest of the family were too caught up in preparations for attending the St. Winifred’s school play to notice much. Strangely, it was Jane who saw and commented.

“Paul, what is it?” she asked under her breath on the morning of the play, and though he said it was nothing she was perfectly sure he was lying, he had such a strange expression on his face when he looked at her.

In truth Paul, watching Jane dance the nymph in what was really a quite awful play, felt not only determined to sacrifice his chance to be trained as a doctor: he felt, oddly, propriatory. Jane was beautiful in that silly silver tunic. He saw again how right it was that she should be a dancer, and somehow his being the one to pay for it filled him with an odd, shivery excitement. He pictured the moment of telling her what he’d done, but he couldn’t – quite – picture what followed.

In any event there was no need to write that letter to Grandfather and give up his career plans. At the end of the ghastly play, Miss Newton made her speech announcing Jane’s scholarship to Sadler’s Wells. Paul’s first reaction was pure relief. There would be no need to give up on being a doctor. Things had worked out perfectly.

But afterwards, lying in bed waiting for sleep to come, he found he was much more able to picture Jane’s gratitude, her willingness to do something special for him to make up for his sacrifice, and in the sticky moments following