Patti LuPone and what convinced Sondheim that she could play Joanne in ‘Company’ (and was there any truth in that she didn’t feel she was the right choice for other Sondheim roles she had previously performed).
(Excerpt from "Great Performances: Keeping Company with Sondheim")
summary: In 1863 Italy, Dr. Florence Seward is summoned to assess an unusual case—a woman whose frailty is matched only by her fervor, whose body betrays her even as her mind remains relentless. Signora Fosca is a study in contradictions, and against her own better judgment, Seward is inexorably drawn to the sharp edges of her. What begins as clinical curiosity dissolves into something far deeper, far darker—something neither of them can turn away from. But there are those who believe Fosca must be contained, who will go to any lengths to see it done. And when the threat comes, Florence is faced with a deadly choice—one she has had to make once before.
wc: ~35K
tags: slow burn; alternating perspectives; early-30s!Seward; pre-canon for Penny Dreadful; seward replaces giorgio (Passion AU); gothic vibes; chronic illness and fatigue; night terrors; panic attacks; period-typical forced restraint; period-typical forced sedation; on-screen violence; off-screen death; mindfulness therapy (but a No Boundaries Seward version); past medical abuse; hurt/comfort (for about 53 seconds); abusive white man with hurt feelings does exactly what you’d expect; navigating sex while chronically ill; fosca has a praise kink; seward has a fosca kink; semi-public masturbation; vaginal fingering; cunnilingus; oral sex while sleeping / wake-up orgasm; dash of overstimulation; squirting; emotional intensity during sex (and everywhere else too)
a/n: no one was more surprised than me that this ended up being a slow burn. They burn exquisitely though.
Read on Ao3 | i'm just gonna tag @thegoddamnfeels and @live-laugh-love-lupone whenever i do this cuz none of this exists without them
I had been summoned to this house by a man who styled himself a doctor but whose bedside manner suggested he belonged more comfortably in a morgue. A colleague of my mentors in alienism, he had requested my consultation with little in the way of details, only that the case was "exceptional" and that he believed I might offer insight where he had failed.
That failure had been evident before I even stepped inside the room where she waited. For all it was a military base, the house itself was a mausoleum of faded grandeur, its walls weighed down with heavy brocade, the air thick with the mingling scents of leather boots, damp fabric, and the unmistakable undercurrent of slow decay. A place of stillness. Of old, sinking things.
And then there was her.
She sat near the window, her body a study in fragile severity, all angles and hollows and sharp, restless fingers poised over an open book. Not reading. Watching.
Watching me.
Fosca's gaze didn't flicker or waver, nor did she attempt to disguise the careful inventory she was taking. The gloves I hadn't removed. The absence of a wedding band. The way I carried myself—straight-backed but wary, self-possessed but already measuring the room for exits.
I recognized the precision of her assessment. It was the same quality I had seen in men accustomed to war—officers, tacticians. A mind that had learned to weigh and measure at a glance, to anticipate before being anticipated.
And yet, she wasn't a soldier.
She was something else.
Fosca was pale as an overcast sky, the marks of illness deep-set in the sharp cut of her cheekbones, the shadowed hollows of her eyes. And yet, she wasn't diminished. Whatever had wasted her body had left her mind untouched—keen, burning, observant to the point of intrusion.
And she had decided something about me already. I could see it in the slight lift of her brow, the ghost of amusement at the corner of her mouth.
I sat in the chair opposite hers.
"You are Dr. Seward," she said. Not a question.
"And you are Fosca."
Her brow lifted higher. This time, there was something like pleasure in it, though tempered by wariness. "No honorifics? Most doctors would afford me at least a pretense of formality before they dismiss me as mad."
The words were sharp, but there was something else beneath them. Not bitterness. Expectation.
I had encountered such patients before—the ones who had been dissected, dismissed, reduced to objects of study rather than subjects of suffering. But something in her tone was different, as though she were testing the shape of me, waiting to see what I might become in response.
"I do not dismiss patients before I have examined them," I said simply.
Her lips curved slightly—not quite a smile, but the suggestion of one. "Then you're unlike the others."
"Perhaps," I allowed. "Or perhaps I am only more patient."
A flicker of something in her eyes—pleasure, but not unguarded. Measured. Cautious. She tightened her fingers over the open pages of her book, as though something about this exchange pleased her more than she had anticipated.
I leaned forward, resting my forearms against my knees. "Your doctor has asked me to consult on your case. Tell me in your own words—what ails you?"
Fosca tilted her head. I felt her eyes move over me again, slower this time, as though considering a different angle of approach.
"Ah. A test," she said. "You wish to see how my own account aligns with the one given to you."
I didn't confirm or deny it.
She regarded me for another long moment before setting the book aside, fingers steepled in her lap. "You have already decided that I am ill," she said. "You speak as though I were a collection of symptoms."
"You're not a collection of symptoms," I corrected. "But you are suffering, and I was called here to understand why."
She exhaled, low and unamused. "And if I tell you that my suffering isn't of the body alone? If I tell you that my mind does not ail me but rather that others fail to comprehend it? That I don’t suffer because my mind is ill but because it's inconvenient?"
"Then I would listen."
Something shifted. I saw it in the way her lips parted slightly, in the fractional widening of her gaze before she masked it. It wasn't often that she was surprised.
But I had surprised her.
-> continue on Ao3
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