Final Prompt: Qui Es-tu Maintenant?
Name: Arthur Benoit Combeferre
Biggest Dream: That someday there won’t be a need for death to achieve change.
Greatest Fear: Being alone. Or seeing his friends hurt.
What Makes You Laugh: His kitten, Garcon. Jokes his friends tell. A good novel.
What Makes You Cry: Being alone. Seeing his friends in any sort of pain. A good novel.
What Makes You Mad: People who tell other people that they aren’t worth anything. Everyone is worth something.
Your Best Trait: He’s always there for his friends when they need him.
Worst Trait: As Brujon said, he’s like a cotton ball. Sometimes he just takes and takes and takes but never gives back.
Are You Happy Now?: No. But that doesn’t mean I’ll never be happy again.
Combeferre looked out the window of the house onto the street below. They should be here any minute now. Everyone else had left long ago, taking all their belongings with them to wherever they were going. He couldn’t blame them. This was going to be dangerous. And they had new priorities now. Enjolras had Minnie. Jehan had Correntin. Grantaire had Theodule. Joly had Javert, Bossuet, and Musichetta.
He banished that thought from his mind almost as quickly as it appeared. Because the they who were coming? Brujon and Favourite. He was going to America with them. To give Favourite away at their wedding.
Wasn’t that odd? He was going to America. He’d never been outside of France before. And he wasn’t just going for fun. Well, kind of. After the wedding, he would probably stay in America for a month or so, go around New York, see what there was to see, then come back to France. And go back to life as before. Except it wasn’t going to be like before. He had so many new friends in and outside of Paris. He was stronger. As chaotic as this past year had been, he was grateful for it all. The ups and downs and all of it.
He knew he would be able to love again. And lead again. This was his purpose. And he would be damned if he didn’t fulfill it.
Paris, 2015. Fluffy white clouds dotted the clear sky over Parc du Champs-des-Mars. Vendors were all around the Eiffel Tower hawking their wares. Children ran by with their parents frantically chasing after them. Dogs barked. A typical Sunday.
Another component to this typical Parisian Sunday sat on the bench closest to the towel. He was a man of 69, flecks of grey dotted his once fully black hair. Those who frequented the parc knew who he was. He was once a great leader. He fought in the May riots and published his first hand account of the experience. He was practically a legend. He never said a word to anyone unless the person talking to him was very persistent.
And today was no exception. The persistent person arrived earlier that day, and spent nearly an hour trying to talk to him. He had fluffy brown hair, glasses, and a slightly cold expression. Combeferre smirked. Like someone else he once knew.
Which is probably why Combeferre spoke more to this boy than any of the others. His birth, growing up, his time in uni. He took particular care describing 1968, and had the young man not been so focused on translating what he said, he would have noticed the older man’s eyes misting over and a small waver in his voice. And a particular attention paid to a young Rromani thief with the laugh of an angel and the spirit of a phoenix.
Normally, this was where most information-seekers lost interest, but not this boy. He wanted more. So Combeferre gave him more. He told him about Woodstock, elections, protests, and the haze of drugs, sex, friends, lovers, and mixtures of the two in the seventies. The eighties brought a new threat-- Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. AIDS. The old man was lucky to not be a victim himself, but some of his friends weren’t. He fought for them. Petitioned for them. Held them while they died.
As he got older, his activism died down a bit. Not completely, but a bit. It took a backseat to his writing. His family. His friends. He never lost contact with any of them. Enjolras, Minnie, Courfeyrac, Jehan, Correntin, Grantaire, Theo, none of them. Not even Brujon and Favourite, at first.
The last time he visited them was almost twenty years ago, before the attack on the World Trade Center. But he made up for it at first with letters, calls, and the like. But...soon those stopped too. It wasn’t on purpose. It was just harder to keep up with people who were so far away.
And now? Now he was an old man, living in Paris as he had always done. Passing the time before he would see them again. Maxine. Ema. Av. All of them. One thing he could be thankful for to break up the monotony was people asking him about the 60s. Like this young man here.
Before he left, the young man asked Combeferre what he could do to enact change. Combeferre’s response? “Fuck the 60s. Fight now. If you want to do anything, you have to stop looking at the past. Learn from it but don’t be stuck in it. Just because it isn’t the sixties doesn’t mean you can’t do anything.”
The young man smiled. “Cimer. And ‘thur?”
Arthur blinked. No one had called him that in forever. “Yes?”
“My father says you’re welcome to join us for tea tonight along the Seine.”
A wide grin made it’s way across the old man’s face. “Thank you Jerome. Tell your father I’ll be there. And tell him to bring his violin.”
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