A Little Fall of Meteors
fic by bobcatmoran
art by pilferingapples and diminutive-fox
“Does anyone know where Jean Prouvaire is?” Enjolras asked, looking over the back room of the Musain with a frown.
Enjolras pulled out his own watch and glanced at it. “Well, he was supposed to be here over an hour ago with his revisions to that women’s rights pamphlet. I hope nothing has befallen him.”
“I wouldn’t worry overmuch if I were you,” Bahorel said from his chair in the corner, tilted back dangerously far on two legs. “He may not look it, what with those sticks he calls arms and legs, but our young poet is quite capable of taking care of himself.…speak of the devil.” Bahorel and his chair fell forward with a thunk upon seeing who had just entered the back room.
Although the newcomer’s face was hidden behind a scarf that wound round his neck several times, it was precisely this scarf, knit with more enthusiasm than skill and twice as long as Jean Prouvaire was tall, that identified him as such.
As if this unique accessory wasn’t distinctive enough, Prouvaire was also sporting a singular fur cap, grey-brown in color, with a striped trail hanging down from the back.
“Is that a new hat, Prouvaire?” Joly asked, looking at it with a mixture of surprise and amusement.
“It is indeed,” was the reply. Prouvaire reached behind him and fingered the tail nervously. “The merchant said it had belonged to a voyageur from America. It’s made from raton laveur.”
“Washing rat?” Courfeyrac asked, trying to keep the horror from his voice. “Prouvaire, you haven’t seriously purchased a hat made from rat, have you?!”
“It’s a damned peculiar rat if it is,” Bahorel said. Look at that — that’s the tail, right? Never seen a rat with a bushy tail, much less a striped one.”
“The Americans call it raccoon,” Prouvaire said.
“So what is a…raccoon then?” Feuilly asked, pronouncing the unfamiliar word with care. “Not a rat then, I presume?”
“Some sort of small bear, I think,” Prouvaire said.
“I thought they were more akin to wildcats,” Joly said. “Or weasels, perhaps.”
“More like some sort of arboreal dog,” Combeferre said.
“That’s a shame,” Prouvaire said. “It would be more exciting if they were bears. Dogs seem very…domestic.”
“They’re not actually dogs, just akin to them,” Combeferre explained. “Procyon, doglike.”
“I should like to see a bear,” Prouvaire said, ignoring him.
“You just saw one when you went to the Jardin des Plantes with Joly and me before Christmas,” Bossuet pointed out.
“But I should like to see one in the wild, in its natural state. It would be very fierce and powerful and not have small boys yelling at it while it slept.”
“It would probably rip your throat out,” said Bahorel.
“I still should like to see one all the same,” Prouvaire retorted.
“Might I see that?” Joly asked, gesturing towards Prouvaire’s hat. It was handed over, and Joly ran his fingers through the fur. “It doesn’t look or feel like bear. Does it keep you warm enough when you’re outside in the cold? It has been a nasty winter.”
“Warm enough, but — oh — outside!”
“Before you set off on another tangent, Jean Prouvaire, did you have those edits?” Enjolras asked.
“Oh, yes, right here,” Prouvaire said, pulling the papers from a voluminous coat pocket. “But outside! Quickly, you all need to see, before they’re gone!”
“What is it?” Combeferre asked, already putting on his overcoat.
“Shooting stars, oh, the sky is full of them!”
A flurry of activity ensued, as cloaks and overcoats were donned, hats were sorted out, and Bossuet was rescued from where he had somehow gotten tangled in Joly’s scarf. “I’m fine, I’m fine, just tied to this chair,” he said. “Perhaps I’ll bring it along, as it seems to have formed quite the attachment to me, and I wouldn’t like it to feel rejected. That way, I’ll have a place to sit in comfort while the rest of you fellows stand.”
“Has anyone seen my hat?” Courfeyrac asked, peering under tables with a worried frown.
“I have an extra scarf which you can tie around your head for warmth if it doesn’t turn up,” Joly said, picking at a knot in the scarf that was holding Bossuet captive. “You really shouldn’t go out with your head uncovered in this weather, lest you catch a cold.”
“Thank you for the offer, Jolllly, but between the faux pas of going bareheaded or wearing a scarf knotted under my chin like an old woman, I’ll risk the head cold.”
“You really shouldn’t, especially given how the chill has been so damp lately. A cold could easily become pneumatic,” Joly said fretfully.
“And it’s a risk that he won’t have to take, thankfully,” Enjolras said. “Here, Courfeyrac, it was hanging underneath my coat.”
“Ah, thank you!” Courfeyrac exclaimed, setting the wayward hat upon his head, then offering an arm to Enjolras. “Shall we?”
“We shall, if everyone is ready.” Enjolras scanned the room. “Jean Prouvaire, will you lead the way?”
“There’s decent enough viewing from the Place Saint-Michel, but if we go near the Jardin du Luxembourg, we’ll get a clear view without any buildings in the way,” Prouvaire said, leading the group down the street and walking backwards so as to talk to his friends.
“What about the trees?” Grantaire asked.
“They’re all in rows, so perhaps if we look between their ranks? We can always try it and then come back if the view proves unsatisfactory,” Feuilly said. “Watch the lamp post,” he warned Prouvaire.
Neatly winding his way around it, Prouvaire suggested, “Or if we could get onto a roof, that would offer the best view. Grantaire, don’t you live around here?”
“Near enough, but it’s my upstairs neighbors who have roof access, and we are no longer on speaking terms. My own rooms have no way of getting to the roof, unless you construct wings of wax and feathers and fly up, although doubtless by the time you finished crafting them it would be morning, the shooting stars would have vanished, and I hear that using such a contraption in sunlight does not tend to end well. There is also a drainpipe that you could climb if you were feeling adventurous, I suppose.”
At Bahorel’s thoughtful look at this suggestion, Combeferre exclaimed, “No one is climbing up any drainpipes! I am all for the best possible view of this astronomical phenomenon, but not at the expense of broken limbs. The view from the Jardin du Luxembourg should be quite adequate. And here we are.”
The friends scanned the sky. It was a cloudless night, the stars standing out clearly against the black sky.
“Oh! There!” exclaimed Courfeyrac, pointing above the tree line. “Did you see it?” he asked his friends.
“Did you make a wish?” Prouvaire asked. “If you wish upon a falling star, your wish will come — there’s another one!”
“And one over there!” Joly said, pointing in the opposite direction of Prouvaire. “Bravo, Prouvaire, what a find!”
“I’ve never seen so many at once,” Grantaire said.
“They aren’t truly stars falling from the sky, are they?” Feuilly asked, sounding worried. “We won’t look up at the skies tomorrow night and find the constellations incomplete, will we?”
“I don’t think so,” Bahorel said. “I feel like we would hear about it if stars went missing every time there was a shooting star.”
“But there are so many in the sky, and most of them not well-known. Would a single one missing necessarily be noticed?”
“It might not even be one that we could notice,” Joly said. “There are multitudes of stars too dim to see with the naked eye. At least one planet as well — witness Herschel finding a heretofore unknown planet by training his telescope upon it. So if these are stars that we otherwise wouldn’t see, then no, we wouldn’t notice their movements. I suppose the only reason we can see them now is because they’ve come nearer with their movement across the heavens and are therefore newly within our field of vision — like how a single candle isn’t visible from far off but sheds enough light to read by if you’re right next to it.”
“Or they’re not stars at all,” Combeferre said. “They could very well be great rocks falling from the sky, superheated so that they glow like coals.”
“Rocks?” Grantaire said, looking doubtfully at the lights streaking the sky.
“There was a rain of stones from the sky in L’Aigle that proved to be extraterrestrial in origin. They were quite warm right after landing and produced streaks across the sky not unlike these.”
“Huh. Glowing stones.” Feuilly said, keeping his eyes on the sky. “Still doesn’t explain where they came from though, really. Perhaps they’re from some other civilization up there.”
Combeferre frowned at the sky, tracing the paths of the meteors with his fingers. After some time, he said, “It looks like they’re coming from Quadrans Muralis.”
Grantaire looked back and forth across the portion of the sky Combeferre was looking at. “Quadrans Muralis? I could tell you that there is Boötes, and there is the Great Bear — do not tell Prouvaire there is a bear hiding in the stars, lest he decide to pay it a visit — but I was unaware that either of them used navigational tools.”
“It’s right there. See? The quadrant’s arms spread outward in a triangle leading from the bend in Draco towards Boötes.”
Grantaire squinted. “If you say so. I suppose it’s no more of a stretch than the ancients’ trick of connecting a zig-zagging string of dots across the sky in a long string and saying, ‘Behold! Here is a dragon!’ as though you could not play the same trick with any number of stars. It’s all little more than seeing patterns in puddles of spilt ink anyhow. More art than science, even when it’s the art of seeing scientific instruments.”
“It’s a perfectly legitimate constellation,” Combeferre said. “Lalande described it, and you can find it in any modern, up-to-date star chart.”
“I yield, I yield,” Grantaire said, throwing up his hands in front of him. “Why do you say these shooting stars — or is it shooting rocks — are coming from there anyway?”
“Here, watch the next few shooting stars,” Combeferre said.
“I thought you said they weren’t stars,” Grantaire said, grinning.
“I am sacrificing accuracy for the sake of common vocabulary and comprehensibility. Now watch them, and note their direction of travel.”
Silence from Grantaire as he looked at the sky with a furrowed brow, then, “It’s as if — if you traced their paths onto a map of the sky, they would look like a series of perspective lines, leading to a vanishing point right about there,” Grantaire said, pointing at a location in the northern sky.
“Right in Quadrans Muralis,” Combeferre said smugly.
“But is it actually in Quadrans Muralis?” a muffled voice asked from behind them. Combeferre and Grantaire jumped, then turned around to see Jean Prouvaire, who pulled his scarf down from his face and continued. “I mean, does their origin have to be amongst the stars, or could it be much closer? If they really are rocks from out there somewhere,” he waved his hand, indicating the sky, “then in order for us to see them and especially for them to rain down upon L’Aigle, they would have to be very close indeed.”
“What’s this about rocks raining on me?” Bossuet asked, turning at the sound of his name. “I seem to have avoided that misfortune thus far, so perhaps you’re speaking of a bird of a different feather?”
“L’Aigle the town in Normandy. They had a rain of rocks from the sky which Combeferre says was akin to what we’re viewing now,” Prouvaire said. “Say, Lesgle, you never lived there, did you? Because then you would have been L’Aigle of L’Aigle.”
“No, and at any rate, I rather prefer myself being L’Aigle of Meaux, your dear Bossuet. And,” he added, “if I had been there, knowing my luck, I’d have had a sky rock crash through my roof. We’re not in any danger of that here, are we?”
“I’d imagine that rocks crashing to the ground from the sky would be loud as thunder. We’d surely hear it,” Bahorel said.
“I hope that doesn’t mean they’re falling somewhere else then,” Feuilly said. “I’d imagine rocks crashing from the sky outside your home would be terrifying, much less crashing through it.”
This horrifying vision let to a brief period of silence, before Enjolras spoke up. “It seems to have slowed down.” Indeed, the white streaks across the sky were now so infrequent that a few minutes had gone by since the last one.
“Well, it seems that the show is just about over,” Courfeyrac said. “What a marvelous display. What do the rest of you say to going back inside and getting something to warm up? I am fairly certain that I can charm Louison into making a cauldron of spiced wine. Consider it my treat, in celebration of this night of shooting stars.”
A chorus of agreement, spiced with a, “Courfeyrac, I can pay you back,” from Feuilly was the response, and Les Amis paraded back to the Musain under the clear, starry sky.
~~~
Special thanks to my little brother for giving this a read-over.
Notes: Raccoons are not bears. Sorry, Jehan. Their closest relatives are actually ring-tailed cats, which, just to confuse everyone, are not actually cats. Jehan is in good company, though, as Carl Linnaeus himself originally classified raccoons as bears.
The Quadrantids are a real meteor shower, usually occurring sometime around January 3–4. They’re notable for being relatively heavy in intensity, but very short in duration, and for being named after a constellation that is no longer recognized (sorry, Combeferre).
Likewise, the meteorites that fell on L’Aigle were a real thing that actually happened in 1803.
Unfortunately, Les Amis missed a real doozy of a meteor shower by one year and an ocean away. The Leonids of November 12–13, 1833, over the United States reportedly had tens of thousands of meteors an hour, were so bright that they woke people up, and ignited the scientific community’s interest in studying meteors. Records of meteor showers prior to then are sketchy, so la la la I’m pretending there were unusually heavy Quadrantids in 18mumbletywhenever.
Lost in Translation
fic by amarguerite
art by pilferingapples
Summary: Combeferre tries to teach Marius German and is interrupted by the Romantic zeitgeist and then gale force winds of puns.
“Marius needs to learn German,” Courfeyrac announced to Bahorel. “Where’s Combeferre?”
“And the relation between your two statements?”
“Bahorel! I am surprised at your mental turpitude this afternoon! Did you attend a lecture at the law school by accident?”
“Alas,” Bahorel admitted, lips twitching, “you have the right of it. I should not be surprised that Combeferre found time to learn German, and yet, I am.”
Combeferre was in the back room of the Cafe Musain, examining Joly’s attempts at parody. Their last attempt had nearly resulted in arrest, so Bossuet and Joly had the possibly brilliant, certainly drunken idea to create edible satires of Charles X. Joly’s characteristic care and precision made him a good cook and the batch of gingerbread batter had turned out very well indeed.
That had been the end of the obvious success.
Joly and Bossuet had invited Grantaire over to help them shape the cookies. Grantaire had been at the Musain with an open bottle of wine and it had seemed impolite not to sit and drink when Louison had already brought them two glasses. Two hours later, they recalled the original purpose of their errand. Joly unearthed a bottle of brandy to aid in the creative process. That “helped” about as much as could be expected. The result of this evening now lay on the table under the map of France, in a very sad row of misshapen lumps.
“You can tell Grantaire studied under Gros,” said Combeferre, taking out his handkerchief. He moved several of the cookies to one end of the table. These were all recognizably profiles of Charles X, and helpfully had raisins for eyes. The rest looked sort of like the profile of a human being, if one had never seen a human being before and had possibly confused human beings with rock formations.
Feuilly was standing at the other end of the table, frowning and tilting his head from one side to the other. “Which… is that…? I think that’s the nose?”
Bossuet looked down the line of Feuilly’s pointing finger. “Alas, no, that’s the tail of his wig. I think. Joly?”
“I think two cookies may have fused into one,” said Joly, rubbing his nose against the knob of his cane. “Quite the medical anomaly.”
“We shall call this one Janus, and pretend it is elaborate political commentary,” said Bossuet. “Ah ha, got it! Charles X is literally two-faced!”
“I do not think anyone would be able to recognize that it is two profiles of Charles X,” said Combeferre. “Feuilly, you are an artist. Now that you know what it is, can you see a likeness?”
“Euh….”
Bossuet sighed. “It is because I baked this particular monster. Let us be thankful that amongst my many names, one finds neither Victor nor Frankenstein. If this is my Creature, heaven help the world. You see, I have no eye for how a man’s nose changes when you put a priest’s cap upon his head.”
“Ideally, the nose should not change,” Feuilly said, still unused, as of yet, to Bossuet’s sense of humor. Feuilly moved onto one of Joly’s attempts. “Is that.. a priest’s cap?”
“Oh wonderful, that is what it is supposed to be!” exclaimed Joly, delighted.
“Why did you put a priest’s cap on the head of Charles X?”
“Because I could not figure out how to do hair mostly,” admitted Joly. “But it is supposed to be an indictment of Charles X’s hyper-religious policies. He might as well be a priest, because of his reliance on the Catholic Church— at least, that is what it was meant to convey, but since his face looks so unpleasantly melty it distracts one, rather, from the intended message.”
Courfeyrac, ever the gourmande, went to look at the cookies himself, Marius trailing behind him like the tail of a comet. Courfeyrac thoughtfully nibbled on one of the more malformed Charles Xs. “One often talks of swallowing injustice,” Courfeyrac remarked, “but it is always considered bitter. Decidedly unlike these. The irony is sweet.”
Bahorel came in then, Jehan orbiting around him. “Ah, Combeferre! Marius needs to learn German— and there is Marius! The stars seem to be aligned.”
Marius looked uncertainly around the room. Combeferre turned his attention from the cookies and smiled. “I can certainly help, though I must confess my own knowledge limited.” Combeferre moved to another table, leaving the others to sort the cookies in order of ‘most like a representation of a human being’ to ‘least likeness to any sentient creature or ones not seen after smoking too much opium.’ Feuilly was supposed to be in charge of this task, but he soon grew distracted. Jehan, Courfeyrac, Joly, Bossuet, and Bahorel were more interested in finding the most horrifying looking cookie than trying to gather together the specimens that would actually be useful, and, anyways, Feuilly was always eager to learn new things. He considered any knowledge useful knowledge, and began slowly edging away from his table.
By the time Enjolras had arrived in the back room, Feuilly was hovering behind Marius, listening intently to Combeferre’s instruction.
“Are you giving a lesson?” asked Enjolras, smilingly. “It appears you have another eager pupil, Combeferre.”
“Feuilly, you are welcome to join us,” said Combeferre. He gestured at the chair Enjolras was already dragging over to their table. “Do you mind, Pontmercy?”
Marius stammered out that he did not. Feuilly gingerly sat down and accepted the blank paper Combeferre put before him. It felt odd to Feuilly to have someone in a top hat and a tailcoat pulling out chairs for him. It mitigated the awkwardness somewhat that it was Enjolras, who always seemed absent-minded (though he wasn’t; Feuilly had never known a man to be more observant), and who extended the same cordiality to everyone. It also helped the Enjolras immediately wandered away afterwards, to look at the cookies and to be genuinely delighted in the creative mishaps of his friends.
“I know I am not—” Feuilly began.
Combeferre interrupted him with, “Anyone who has an interest in German is welcome. Have you an interest in German?”
Simply, Feuilly replied, “I have an interest in everything.”
“Good. Let us continue with introductions. ‘I am called,’ is…?” Blank stares. Marius was too shy, Feuilly too intimidated. Combeferre prompted, “‘Ich heiße.’ Now pray repeat it?”
Marius mumbled something; Feuilly approximated the sounds. Combeferre patiently repeated the phrase. “Ich heiße Herr Combeferre. Und sie? Wie heißen sie, Marius? Though I should first explain the difference between the more formal address and the more common—”
“I— I do not know if this is….” Marius reddened. He was still deeply embarrassed to be talking to Combeferre. Correction seemed imminent, and Marius was morally certain that it would be as cutting and as mortifying as the last time. And, then, Marius had been talking in his own language, not a foreign one. It would be so much worse this time around. “I am to translate articles for a dictionary.”
“So, learning conjugations will be useful,” said Combeferre.
“You will bore him to death,” complained Jehan. “Why not try for some poetry? Goethe is marvelous, his sense of the uncanny—” Jehan stopped himself, with a gasp, and thrust a particularly hideous cookie into Courfeyrac’s hands. “Oh inspiration can come from the most mundane of discussions!”
He whipped Bahorel’s black coat off of the back of a chair and attempted to turn it into some kind of a cloak. Jehan was small and slender, and Bahorel was large and built more to wrestle bulls to the ground than to sit and compose poetry. The coat was therefore about the proportional size of a cloak on Jehan’s slender form, and it did not look as ridiculous as it should have. Jehan was also wearing a doublet over his trousers, so sartorial expectations were low, anyways.
Marius and Feuilly looked on in confusion.
Combeferre blinked. “Ah… what, pray tell, is this costuming in aid of?”
“Nien! Im Deutch!” Jehan insisted.
Combeferre was not amused. “Fine. Guten Abend. Wie heißen sie?”
“Ich bin der Tod!”
Combeferre sighed. “First of all, we are exploring the use of the verb heißen, to be named, not seib, to be, second of all— der Tod?”
Feuilly did not grasp that Jehan had literally just announced that he was death and persevered with the lesson. “Guten Abend Herr Tod,” he said, very politely. “Ich heiße Feuilly. Woher kommst du?”
Jehan replied that he came from the undiscovered country from whom no traveller returned.
This was understandably too complex for either Feuilly or Marius to follow. They heard the word ‘country’ and were satisfied.
Feuilly motioned at Marius to continue with the lesson.
“Wie geht es Ihnen?” asked Marius. He did this very awkwardly. He seldom asked anyone ‘how are you’ in French, let alone in German.
Jehan replied that he was fine, thank you, but didn’t Herr Feuilly and Herr Pontmercy feel a little sickly?
Feuilly looked blank, like a piece of paper freshly pulled from a notebook. “Euh… enchante— no, what was it again? Freund mich?”
Jehan informed them that it was, indeed, a pleasure, to meet Death.
“You are throwing off Combeferre’s lesson plan,” observed Enjolras, quite mildly.
“We are still going through introductions,” protested Jehan. Then, struck with a sudden idea, he ran over to Bahorel, and whispered to him.
Combeferre clearly hoped to get back to the lesson and began trying to explain how ‘du’ and ‘sie’ corresponded with ‘tu’ and ‘vous.’ His lesson plan was not to be, however; Jehan’s voice rang out through the room, in clearly, manly resolution.“Start again!”
Marius was too shy to start the dialogue. Feuilly gamely began again, “Guten Abend. Wie heißen sie?”
Jehan dramatically swirled out of the way. Bahorel had assumed a rather gargoyle-esque stance, his fingers curled like claws, and wore the most hideous crown anyone had ever seen. It was, in fact, more hideous than any of the gingerbread heads. This was because it was made out of the most horrifying ones, strung together with the laces from Jehan’s doublet.
“Was ist das?” groaned Combeferre.
“Das ist der Erlkönig,” replied Jehan, happily.
The other Romantics in the room found this hilarious. Courfeyrac and Bossuet were near weeping with laughter, and Joly, who was musical, hummed some of the Schubert lied. Marius looked to Courfeyrac for clarification.
“The Goethe poem,” Courfeyrac choked out. “You must have read it! Or heard Schubert’s song setting, it is quite famous! You know, a father on a horse with his young son, the son hears the Erlkönig tempting him away, the father disbelieves him, and there is an inexplicable death four verses later.”
Feuilly had not heard of either the poem or the song, and decided to ignore the Romantic for the practical. He once more pressed on with his lesson. “Guten Abend Herr Erlkönig.”
“Jehan,” protested Combeferre.
“It is German culture!” protested Jehan, in his turn. “Come now Combeferre, you cannot object to the only king that I truly recognize.”
“I am not sure I wish to politely greet kings,” demured Feuilly.
“Friend Combeferre, do you know of a less polite greeting than ‘Guten Abend’?” asked Enjolras, leaning against the table of gingerbread heads with Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac laughed and said that he could think of several, but was glared into keeping that knowledge to himself.
Joly was humming Der Erlkönig still, and sang out, “Und bist du nicht willig, so brauch ich Gewalt!” Then, in a normal vocal modulation, he added, “Gewalt! It means ‘force.’”
Jehan, delighted, rewarded Joly with a cookie. Feuilly and Marius dutifully wrote down ‘Gewalt’ on the sheets of paper Combeferre had put in front of them.
“Guten… Gewalt?” attempted Feuilly. Bahorel hissed at him in a suitably eldritch horror sort of fashion. Joly nearly choked on a cookie.
Combeferre had been holding his head in his hands and now put his head on the table.
“I shall raise your head,” said Courfeyrac, coming to perch on the edge of the table. “We are the Friends of the ABC, and must uplift those struggling with the Ah Beh Tsay!” His German pronunciation was not good, and the joke even worse. Enjolras looked puzzled. Courfeyrac said, wincing, “The pun does not properly translate.”
“Neither will Marius if this keeps happening,” growled Combeferre, though without any real anger. “Bahroel, stop hissing. I would not rule out the existence of otherworldly elf monarchs, but I doubt the Erlkönig would successfully lure children to their doom if it hissed like that.”
Jehan staggered backwards dramatically, clutching at his velvet doublet. “Ack! Combeferre, how can you say such things? Does your soul have callouses?” Jehan used the word ‘cal,’ which caused Courfeyrac to start elbowing Bossuet in excitement.
“No Courfeyrac!” begged Combeferre.
Undeterred by this censure, Courfeyrac persisted, “But, Combeferre! With me and Bossuet as the companions of your bosom surely you must have-”
Enjolras had been listening intently and interrupted, “Calembours!” A pun was a “calembour” in French. The beatific smile which accompanied this did much to mitigate Combeferre’s exasperation.
In his heavily accented English, Courfeyrac exclaimed, “Ee ‘as beat us to se pun-ch!”
Recognizing the word “pun” Bossuet pointed at Combeferre and added, “You oughtn’t to have tried to stop us! This is your pun-ition.”
The much harassed Combeferre dragged over Jehan. “Der Tod, may I introduce you to Herr Courfeyrac and Herr Bossuet?”
“Why?” ased Feuilly.
Combeferre raised his eyes towards heaven. “It is the only way to get the puns to stop.”
Enjolras put his hand on Combeferre’s shoulder and said, with the same smiling mildness as ever, “That is right. You are my dearest friend but even I cannot offer you im-pun-ité.”
Courfeyrac and Bossuet were so pleased by this show of understanding from their chief they piled on him at once, loudly thumping him on the back and tormenting the French language in further puns, going much too rapidly to be intelligible.
“Entre deux maux il faut choisir le moindre,” muttered Combeferre. “Which one shall you take Herr Tod?”
But Jehan was busy explaining Der Erlkönig to Feuilly, and confusedly translating passages of the poem in Marius’s general direction, and could drag neither of the punsters into hell.
“There is only one Meaux present,” Courfeyrac said, slinging an arm around Bossuet’s shoulders.
“I am going to kill you both myself,” Combeferre said.
A pun occurred to Courfeyrac and Bossuet at about the same time, and they began elbowing each other excitedly. Combeferre eyed them both with a harassed expression, and then decided to take off his glasses to polish them, in the improbable hope that if he didn’t see them making a pun, the pun wouldn’t be as terrible.
“We cannot die, you see, since der Tod has turned translator,” said Courfeyrac. “How good it is to see that Herr Tod still concerns himself with the maux—” evils, which sounded like ‘mots,’ words “—of the world.”
“Courfeyrac,” said Enjolras, warningly.
Courfeyrac held up his hands, “My Rousseau pun was even worse. You see? I am keeping track of all the moves in this jeu des maux.”
Even Bahorel groaned.
“Ah ah ah!” Bossuet wagged a finger at them all. “We aren’t done yet! I have advice for der Tod even Combeferre could not condemn: between two mots, one must always choose the lesser.”
Warnings: Alcoholism, recovery, relapse; brief emetophobia; canonical major character death
Summary: Combeferre seeks to free Grantaire from the chains on his dependence on alcohol, no matter if he may have a dual motivation in mind. But just when things seem to be going better than Combeferre could have hoped between them, the events of June 1832 happen.
Notes: Much thanks to Pilf for allowing me to not so much bend as outright break the rules on word limit here, and to Perry for agreeing to this beast. As with everything I write of this nature, anything I say or imply about addiction, recovery and relapse are based on my own experiences and should not be taken as universal. Most of the recovery itself takes place offscreen, due to the sometimes graphic nature of detox that could have bumped this out of T territory. As this fic is over 5000 words long, it will be cut off if read on Tumblr mobile.
Combeferre let out a world-weary sigh before opening the door to the modest suite of rooms he called his own. It had been almost three days since he had last slept in his own bed, and judging by the ache in his back and the numbness that had stolen over his mind as he journeyed through the near-empty streets of Paris, he longed for it dearly.
But sleep was not to be achieved, at least not immediately, as Combeferre opened the door to find a fire lit in his grate and Courfeyrac lounging on his méridienne, sipping from a glass of wine. “Ah, Combeferre!” Courfeyrac said loudly, sitting up and raising his glass as if toasting his return. “I hope you do not mind I helped myself. Awaiting your return when you left no word as to where you’d gone was thirsty work.”
If it were not for the fact that Combeferre and Courfeyrac had been close friends for years, Combeferre might have taken Courfeyrac’s words at face value. As it was, he read the worry hidden in his tone and saw the shadows that lingered under Courfeyrac’s eyes, not quite masked by the brightly-colored waistcoat and cravat clearly chosen to make Courfeyrac look less peaked, and surmised that he had not been the only one with a few sleepless nights under his belt. “You were awaiting my return?” he asked mildly. “Surely when you had entered my chambers and discovered my absence, you should have taken your leave.”
“I did,” Courfeyrac acknowledged steadily. “But not after trying to ascertain your whereabouts, and upon discovering no one knew where you had gone, I endeavored to wait for you here. Granted, I did not imagine it would take you this long to return…”
His words held no condemnation in them, only mild curiosity, but Combeferre flushed and said quickly, “I was with Grantaire.”
That simple syllable held a world of emotions and discussions between the two men, and Combeferre bristled at the assumed accusation. “He has endeavored to give up alcohol,” Combeferre told Courfeyrac, sighing heavily, for this was a topic that he and Courfeyrac had discussed — at least a topic they had discussed in theory — many times before. “And he grew ill from doing so. His body has grown dependent on the alcohol and in its absence…”
He trailed off, hoping that Courfeyrac would understand, but instead Courfeyrac’s brow furrowed. “If Grantaire was ill, you should have called for a doctor,” he said lightly. “Joly, perhaps, if a real physician was not to be trusted. Surely as much as I am sure Grantaire appreciated you nursing him to health, there were other alternatives to you sitting by his bedside.”
“Even if there were, what need was there for an alternative?” Combeferre asked, matching Courfeyrac’s assumed levity. “Grantaire is our friend, and as I was free to sit by his side and ensure he did not die from convulsions or hurt himself in his hallucinations, why should I not have done so?”
Courfeyrac’s brow furrowed. “Because I do not believe you are doing so for the right reasons.”
Combeferre sighed and loosened his cravat as he slumped into the chair by the fireplace. “And what would you deem the right reasons? To free our friend from the hold that alcohol has over him, with the research that I have done into dipsomania, what better reason exists than that?”
“And what of Enjolras?”
Combeferre seemed taken aback by the question. “What of Enjolras?”
Courfeyrac set his glass of wine down on the table, running his finger lightly down the stem. “If, hypothetically, you were assisting a mutual friend of ours in hopes that under different circumstances, happier and more complete in himself, he might catch the eye of our Noble Leader, that could be considered…honorable of you,” he said, carefully. “If you were assisting a mutual friend in hopes that he might instead discover similar feelings to your own, then that is another matter entirely.”
For a moment, it seemed that Combeferre would deny that sentiment outright, but instead, he reached for the bottle of wine and spare glass that Courfeyrac had thoughtfully left out. “You do not know of what you speak,” he muttered.
“Don’t I?” Courfeyrac leaned forward, his expression troubled. “You and I sat in this very room, splitting a bottle of wine much like on this night — or on this morn, I suppose, given the hour — and you confessed that you wished to help Grantaire, wished to assist him become a man free from alcohol and thus hopefully catch more than disdain from Enjolras. You thought it was a plan in which they could both be happy, and I do not question that motive. You and I have known for a long time that there is something good that could transpire between Enjolras and Grantaire if only they could both manage it. But I question whether you will be happy, if your plan succeeds, if Enjolras spares a second thought to our beloved libertine.”
Combeferre shrugged and took a sip from his glass of wine. “I will be happy if Grantaire is happy,” he said quietly.
Courfeyrac studied him for a long moment, then hoisted his own glass and said, a little gravely, “I truly hope that you will be”, before draining his wine. Combeferre took a moment before draining his glass as well, the wine sticking in his throat the way that the lie just uttered by his lips had not.
——————————
It had been two weeks previous when this all had began — not counting the conversation Courfeyrac had mentioned, which had taken place long past, under the influence of lofty ideals and far too much wine — when Combeferre had been able to put into action his previously half-formed plans. Though plans was perhaps an incorrect term, as Combeferre hadn’t planned on this happening, had only opined how he wished things would turn out to bring the most happiness to their friends — or rather, the most happiness to Grantaire.
Combeferre had long realized that he harbored feelings toward Grantaire, feelings that Grantaire instead had towards Enjolras. He could not have pinpointed exactly why he had such affections for Grantaire — in as much as Grantaire was Enjolras’s true opposite, he was as much Combeferre’s, at least in certain senses — but perhaps that was the draw. Grantaire was kind, when he wished to be and often at the most unsuspecting moments, and well-spoken, at least when the alcohol did not send him on rambling soliloquies; funny, when his humor did not run into the vulgar, and intelligent, that much was clear from any conversation Combeferre had engaged in with him; he was not unattractive, swarthy and well-muscled, and if his body and face showed what hardships he had encountered in life, Combeferre did not find that aesthetically unappealing.
But whatever the cause of his affections, he had long since abandoned any true hope of Grantaire reciprocating his feelings, not when the dark-haired man felt so strongly towards Enjolras. But if he could not have his feelings with Grantaire reciprocated, he could work towards getting Enjolras to reciprocate Grantaire’s feelings, could he not?
At least, that is what he told himself, and when the opportunity presented itself, logic told Combeferre to seize the moment.
It did not present itself in the most auspicious way — Combeferre had stepped outside of the Musain one evening following a meeting to find Grantaire doubled over, holding himself up with one hand against the wall of the Musain, emptying the contents of his stomach. “Grantaire?” Combeferre had called.
Grantaire looked up and shakily wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Ah, Combeferre,” he said, forcing a smile onto his face. “My apologies that you must see me this way. The wine has not been kind on my stomach this eve.”
Combeferre frowned at him. “I did not think you had drunk nearly enough to need to purge yourself this early on.”
“Evidently you have not been paying close enough attention to my drinking,” Grantaire replied, clearly aiming for levity, though his smile was more of a grimace. “It is nothing important. A mere misestimation of my limits. It will not happen again.”
Combeferre’s frown deepened. “It may not be my place to say anything—” he started, and Grantaire snorted and waved a dismissive hand.
“I promise, if your place is overstepped, I’ll not tell Enjolras to spare you from the lecture about personal autonomy.”
Though Combeferre half-smiled at that comment, his expression quickly became serious again. “You say that it will not happen again, just as you say that it is unimportant, but I believe it to be of utmost importance. Your health is important.” He did not say ‘to me’, though the words seemed implied.
Grantaire slowly straightened, his own expression oddly blank. “My health is important?” he repeated. “To whom is my health important? Surely not I, for I bartered my health away in favor of absinthe and frivolity years ago. My health has no impact on the Cause for which you fight, though admittedly my sobriety could provide less of a distraction than my drunkness.”
“And your sobriety could perhaps provide a better or at least different sort of distraction to Enjolras.”
Now Grantaire cocked his head slightly, his brow furrowed. “If I am a distraction of any sort, he hides it well. Certainly I have been the subject of his ire on more than one occasion, but as a nonbeliever in a den of credence, that is only to be expected.”
Combeferre could not help but flush slightly, but carried on determinedly. “And yet you would seek to be more than that to Enjolras, would you not?”
Grantaire’s lips tightened, and for a moment Combeferre thought that he might call an end to the conversation. Instead, Grantaire said stiffly, “And if I did? What, you think my sobriety would have an impact on that? Surely it would be easier to convert me to a zealot than implore me to give up my drink, and would perhaps have a similar impact upon our noble leader.”
For a moment, Combeferre was lost for a reply, not as ready as Grantaire with a barbed comeback for every argument. But unlike Enjolras and Grantaire, whose verbal spars were often off-the-cuff, quick responses driven more by heat than by actual conviction, Combeferre’s arguments were measured, calm, logical, and he would not change that now. Instead, he looked carefully at Grantaire, weighing his options. “It would perhaps be easier to convert you to the Cause,” he acknowledged slowly. “But I believe the more lasting impact would be to wean you from your drink, both for yourself, and for the Cause.”
Though Grantaire did not look convinced, he changed tack, his eyes narrowing slightly. “This is not the first time one has attempted to sway me from the hold of alcohol. But Joly has warned me of the potential effects, and given the choice, I’ll take drunkenness and disappointing Enjolras any day.”
Combeferre inclined his head slightly. “There are dangers, of course, as your body has grown accustomed to the alcohol. But I would be willing to help you through the ill effects, for as long as you would need me.”
Grantaire looked startled. “But…why?” he managed. “Offering to assist me to be rid of the demon that haunts me alone…you are kind, Combeferre, if misguided. I know you well enough to know you would do this for reasons other than personal gain, as certainly you would gain nothing from my sobriety, but still, why? Enjolras aside, as I do not see him as motivation enough for you, why would you seek to help me?”
Combeferre shrugged. “Is it enough to say that you are my friend, and that above all else I desire to see you happy? Because if you can tell me honestly that you are happy now, as you are, with wine and absinthe your most consistent companions, I would trouble you no further.” Grantaire was silent, and Combeferre, emboldened, took a step closer to him. “But even if your sobriety had not a single impact on Enjolras, I would still encourage you to seek it, because I do believe you deserve health and happiness, Grantaire. And as your friend, I would help you find it.”
Grantaire was quiet for a long moment, staring at Combeferre with a curious look on his face. “I was not aware we were such friends.”
Combeferre half-smiled. “I would do anything for a friend who suffered in such a way. I’ve been reading some writings by an American physician, Dr. Benjamin Rush, and he believes your affliction, your dependence on alcohol, is not a moral failure, but rather a medical disease, and I must admit that I do not disagree. And if any of our companions suffered from a disease, I would seek to treat it, would I not?”
“Logic would tell you to do so,” Grantaire said evenly. “But even if this were a disease, which I do not necessarily believe, it is of my own making. And there is no cure for my own stupidity, I assure you of that.”
“But would you be willing to try?” Combeferre pressed, his gaze intent. “If it could possibly make you happy?” Grantaire’s expression did not change, and Combeferre hesitated before adding, “If it could possibly make Enjolras happy?”
Grantaire’s eyes flickered up to Combeferre’s before he looked away. “I just do not see the point in trying,” he said quietly. “Not when I would inevitably fail.”
Combeferre shook his head. “Grantaire—” he started, but Grantaire cut him off, his expression tightening.
“You would seek to dissuade me, and that is your right, just as it is mine to refuse. But I will not let you say more until you tell me why you wish to help me, truly.”
There were a multitude of reasons Combeferre could offer, including the truth, though he knew better than to utter those words at that time. So he chose instead a truth, and a plausible one at that. “Because I believe that the utmost right of every human on this Earth is to be free,” he said simply. “And that includes freedom from what ails you. And as I have the means and opportunity to assist, to help you find that freedom, I would be remiss if I did not help you.”
Grantaire hesitated before asking, “Are you sure that Enjolras did not put you up to this?”
Combeferre couldn’t help it — he laughed, though he quickly stifled it. “My friend, I am sorry. I do not mean to jest at your expense. No, of the many virtues our noble leader possesses, that is not one of them. His concern is for the masses, nameless as they are, and while he is fierce in his love of all of his companions, it is not oft on such an individual level.”
“But for you it is?” Grantaire asked, a little coolly. “For you, the Cause may be seen even in me?”
Shaking his head, Combeferre said quickly, “You are not the Cause or even a cause. You are a man struggling, and I seek only to help. You have every right to tell me to mind my own business.”
Grantaire was looking at him with an odd expression on his face. “And yet,” he said slowly, “I am finding that I do not want to.” He took a deep breath and then sighed. “I may yet regret it, but who am I to stand in the way of your noble quest for freedom? Least of all when it seems it will benefit more than just my sorry soul.”
“It will,” Combeferre had promised him. “It will.”
And though it remained too early to tell for certain if it would, during the next two weeks, Combeferre had done everything in his power to help Grantaire see that it could. The physical act of stopping the alcohol consumption did not start immediately — Combeferre insisted Grantaire see a physician or at least Joly before starting the process. Grantaire had not been wrong, nor Joly in warning him — Grantaire’s dependence on alcohol could have serious physical and psychological effects on his body with his sudden cessation, and arrangements needed to be made to help him through the worst of it. Combeferre had, true to his word, been there every step of the way through the tremors and nausea, hallucinations and convulsions. Now, Grantaire was free from the physical side effects, at least from what Combeferre had read, but had an uphill battle in facing his desire to drink again.
For that reason, Combeferre took the night and the day after to ensure his affairs were still in order — not a difficult task, as he kept a fairly tight household, his own tendency to hoard books and the odd specimen aside, but his landlady was paid through that month and next, and if he spent a little less time at his own home, she was kind enough to ensure that no one trespassed (other, apparently, than Courfeyrac, though Combeferre could not find himself surprised that his landlady had taken a shine to Courfeyrac — everyone took a shine to Courfeyrac).
But once the sun began to set the following eve, Combeferre made his way back to Grantaire’s apartment, ready to assist as needed. He found Grantaire at his table, cravat loosened, palm flat against the table where normally it would be curled around the neck of bottle. His eyes were red-rimmed and he looked tired, a product of sleeping fitfully over the past few days, but when he smiled at Combeferre, his smile was genuine. “Returned so soon?” he asked lightly. “Here I thought you might tire of my company.”
“Never,” Combeferre told him sincerely, loosening his own cravat as he sat across from him. “I promised to be here so long as you need me, and here I am.”
“And need you I do,” Grantaire said, his tone turning brisk. “I’ve procured a set of dominos — from where matters not — and need someone with which to play. Have you played before? I shall teach you if not, though I suspect you’ve a shrewd enough mind to catch on regardless.”
Combeferre smiled and shook his head, relaxing, content to spend the evening distracting Grantaire however he wished, content even more to simply spend the evening with Grantaire.
——————————
In the following weeks, such an evening became routine. Combeferre still tended to his duties, both personally and for the Cause, and both men attended Les Amis meetings with regularity. But in their free time, Combeferre and Grantaire could oft be found together, playing dominos, reading together, or just talking together. In Grantaire Combeferre found a worthy companion, more than he could have imagined when he gave thought to it before this all began. Grantaire when sober gave voice to his thoughts normally muddled by the alcohol, and Combeferre found him to have a broad intellect and warm sense of humor.
His discussions with Grantaire ranged from scientific discoveries to the most mundane, Grantaire willing to argue and balk at every turn but also consider Combeferre’s more wild notions without outright dismissing them. Combeferre used Grantaire to work through his thoughts, surprised and very pleased to find Grantaire willing to listen to anything he had to say and return his sentiments, often with arguments adjusted and calibrated perfectly.
It was everything Combeferre always thought Grantaire had the potential to be, and should have been perfect, but Combeferre could not help but feel guilty. Where he felt his friendship with Grantaire deepening, he could not help but feel that he was meant to be doing this for Enjolras’s sake, to assist Grantaire in becoming for Enjolras what he had instead become for Combeferre — a confidant, a friend, and someone on whom Combeferre could rely.
Still, he put those thoughts from his mind, because surely if Grantaire was getting better, if he was not drinking and was not tempted to drink, it did not matter for what purpose. At least, so he told himself.
But one day, following a particularly vicious argument with Enjolras as to Grantaire’s own utility, Grantaire returned to his suite of rooms sullen and silent. Combeferre trailed after him as he had been recently, but did not know what to say, Grantaire preferring to brood rather than speak. Finally, when they were both inside, Grantaire gripped the edge of the table so hard his knuckles turned white. “I desire a drink,” he said quietly. “You have heard Enjolras — even sober I bring nothing forward that he finds useful for his Cause. Grantaire is a drunk and Grantaire is useless — his words, not mine. If so he thinks, why should I not be?”
“Because you can be more than that,” Combeferre said quietly. “You are more than that. You have come so far—”
“And for what?” Grantaire challenged, his face red. “To prove to Enjolras that even sober I am no more useful to him than any gamin off the street? To show that when the time comes, none will be able to say that Grantaire did anything for the revolution?”
Combeferre shook his head. “This was never about that,” he reminded Grantaire, still quiet, though his tone was firm. “Your aim here was not in turning you into something you are not, a revolutionary zealot, but in freeing you from the chains that alcohol wrought on you.”
“But what good is freedom from chains if I’ve naught to show for it?” Grantaire asked bitterly. “Enjolras despises me just the same sober as he did drunk.”
“And this was never about Enjolras,” Combeferre told him, his volume rising slightly. “This was about freeing yourself, with the possibility of Enjolras as a hopeful side effect. Do not throw away all you have worked for these past few weeks on a wish!”
Grantaire gave Combeferre an approximation of a smile. “How strange to hear the Guide of the rebellion arguing against hope.”
Combeferre all but slammed his hand down on the table, and Grantaire flinched slightly, his eyes wide. “Desiring to have Enjolras suddenly change is not a hope, it is a delusion! I am filled with hope for you, such hope, and I want nothing more than for you to find that hope in yourself, that hope for yourself, for that is what will be your light when Enjolras cannot or will not be.”
Grantaire was silent for a long moment after that outburst, his brow drawn, his hand clenched into a fist. Finally, in a low voice that did not sound entirely like his own, he asked, “Why do you care?”
Sighing, Combeferre sat back in his seat, suddenly exhausted. “I have told you many times—” he started, his voice low, but Grantaire shook his head as well, leaning across the table until the were merely inches apart, his eyes searching Combeferre’s for the truth he saw Combeferre as hiding from him.
“Why?” Grantaire repeated, gripping Combeferre’s arms lightly. “I am not worthy of any of the time you have dedicated to this cause above the plight of the people, though this one may be just as hopeless. Why would you try so hard when you are only destined to fail, or worse? Why do you even care if I poison myself sooner rather than later? Why—”
Whatever question he was to ask next never made it out his lips, because Combeferre closed the space between them and kissed him.
For just one moment, Grantaire kissed him back, then, abruptly, pulled away. Combeferre did not quite panic, though he felt close to it. Instead, he met Grantaire’s gaze and said simply. “That is why.”
Grantaire nodded slowly, his expression troubled. “And if I did not return the sentiment?”
Combeferre shrugged. “I would have helped you anyway, will continue to help you. You are my friend, first and foremost.” He wanted to leave it there, but could not stop himself from asking, “Do you not return the sentiment, then?”
Grantaire shrugged and sat back in his chair. “In truth, I know not how I feel,” he said slowly. “Between the alcohol and Enjolras…” He shook his head as if unwilling to finish the thought. “Will you give me time to work out what I feel?”
“Of course,” Combeferre responded instantly. “What is most important to me, what I want above all, is for you to get better for yourself, whatever that takes.”
——————————
Though true to his word Combeferre still assisted Grantaire over the next several days, something had shifted in their friendship, something that could not shift back until Grantaire made a decision, and it made Combeferre uneasy, knowing his fate rested in so tenuous a position. This feeling was not helped by Enjolras sitting next to him after a Les Amis meeting one night the next week, after most of their friends had adjourned for different company and far better wine. “Courfeyrac says that you have been spending a lot of time with Grantaire lately,” Enjolras said in lieu of preamble, his expression unreadable as he looked at Combeferre.
Combeferre shrugged. “He and I have discovered mutual interests. Despite your frequent frustration with him, I find his company enjoyable.” He paused before asking, “Is this a problem? For the Cause? Or…for a different reason?”
Enjolras looked surprised at the question, though his expression quickly smoothed out. “Not a problem,” he hedged. “Certainly not for the Cause, as what a man does in his private life should have no impact on our fight unless, of course, it directly counters the fight for all.” He fell silent, his brow furrowing as if in thought before saying hesitantly, “I did not know you felt that way. The…Greek way.”
Half-smiling at Enjolras’s awkward phrasing, Combeferre shrugged. “There are many among our number who indulge in Greek love, some exclusively. I admit that I would not define myself strictly in the Greek fashion.”
Enjolras nodded slowly. “And you…and Grantaire…”
Combeferre’s smile faded. “If a man’s private life has no impact on the Cause, for what purpose do you ask me this?”
To Combeferre’s surprise, Enjolras flushed. “I merely sought to know what you were doing,” he muttered.
Combeferre shook his head, suddenly angry, angry at the entire situation. “Why would it matter what I am doing?” he asked loudly. “For surely you don’t care for Grantaire — you have made that abundantly clear. You openly despise the man, or at least act as if you do, and yet the moment someone else shows interest, you…” He bit off his words and allowed himself to calm slightly before saying in a low voice, “I do not even know what you mean to accomplish here, except to say that toying with our comrade’s emotions is a low move designed for far less worthy men.” Enjolras’s jaw clenched but he did not answer, and Combeferre said, still quiet, “If you do not have feelings for him, at least tell the man as such, let him down from whatever fantasies he lives in his head.”
“The problem is not that I do not have feelings for him,” Enjolras said quietly, avoiding Combeferre’s gaze. “The problem is that I do.”
Combeferre stared at him, his heart beating almost a painful rhythm in his chest. This was everything he had feared, everything even he, undoubtedly Enjolras’s closest friend, could not have anticipated. Certainly he had known Enjolras’s feelings toward Grantaire were more complex than mere disdain, but to know that Enjolras harbored feelings of this nature… “Then you must tell him,” Combeferre croaked, his mouth dry.
Enjolras just shook his head. “I cannot.” He managed a small smile. “And now you see why it is a problem.”
Frowning, Combeferre said slowly, “I am afraid that I do not.”
Enjolras sighed, something in his expression turning stony. “I cannot act on these feelings for fear of what I would bring on Grantaire by doing so. Our Cause, the sedition we utter so freely in this room, it will have consequences, ramifications, and while I would sacrifice myself and my life and my dignity, while I would gladly accept any man doing the same for our Cause, I would not see Grantaire dragged into that, not when his belief lies not with our Cause.”
Combeferre’s brow furrowed. “But Grantaire should be allowed that choice, just as any of our number would be granted that choice when the time comes.”
Tilting his head slightly, Enjolras said quietly, “It seems to me that Grantaire has made his choice, and in my estimation, he has chosen well.” Combeferre shook his head, but the words he would utter in protest died in his throat as Enjolras continued, his voice uncharacteristically gentle, “My friend, you are in many ways the sum of the best parts of myself, and all that I could never be. If it cannot be me, there is no other that I would wish for Grantaire.”
“But he wants you,” Combeferre replied, a little desperately, even if this was not the argument he truly wanted to make; on occasion, appealing to Enjolras’s passions, even his now confessed humanly passions, was the best way to get through to him.
Here, however, even that seemed destined to fail, as Enjolras met his gaze steadily. “And he needs you.” Abruptly, Enjolras stood, though he paused and tentatively reached out to grip Combeferre’s shoulder. “As always, I leave what I cannot trust myself with in the capable hands of my closest lieutenant.”
In that moment, any further argument Combeferre might have made faltered, and he could no no more than look up at Enjolras and nod slowly, even if his chest seemed locked in the vice-like grip of guilt. He needed to tell Grantaire what Enjolras felt for him — it was only right to do so, was it not? Combeferre would never seek to purposefully leave any, least of all one of his own comrades, in willful ignorance. Enjolras may not wish Grantaire to know, but Combeferre could not keep this from him.
Could he?
It would be better for him, certainly, if Grantaire never discovered the conversation that had transpired between Enjolras and himself — he already knew his affections could never be truly reciprocated, at best a pale imitation of what Grantaire felt towards Enjolras, and any glimmer of hope would cause even that pale imitation to fade completely. But would it not be better for Grantaire to know the truth?
The thought haunted him on his entire walk back to his apartment, and with it the debate over whether to tell Grantaire or to not. But when he arrived at his apartment, the thought was put from his mind by the form of the man in question leaning against the wall next to his door. “Grantaire?” Combeferre asked, surprised.
Grantaire looked up at him and smiled, a genuine smile, such as Combeferre had not seen from Grantaire since, it seemed, this entire thing had begun. “I hope you do not mind the intrusion.”
“Indeed not,” Combeferre said, opening his door and ushering Grantaire inside. “Though if you are going to make a habit of stopping by, I recommend becoming acquainted with my landlady; she appears to have no regard for thoughts of privacy.”
Grantaire’s smile widened. “I may or may not have spoken with her before you arrived,” he admitted. “She offered me admittance, but I thought it best to wait for you.”
Combeferre harrumphed and shook his head. “Yes, perhaps for the best,” he said, glancing around to ensure his suite was not overly messy, cluttered as it was with his many books, specimens, and other belongings. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”
Grantaire, however, did not sit, instead shifting awkwardly. “I had rather hoped we could talk.”
Combeferre shot him a sideways glance. “Yes, I think that would be for the best,” he said softly.
Though Grantaire nodded, there was something of a nervous energy to the movement, and though he started, “I wanted to come to tell you…”, he quickly trailed off, instead darting forward to kiss Combeferre square on the lips.
Freezing, Combeferre’s eyes opened wide in shock, and he would have pulled back were it not for Grantaire pulling away as quickly as he had moved forward, his eyes wide as well. “What…what was that?” Combeferre managed.
“When I returned to my room this eve, I longed for a drink,” Grantaire told him, still with the same nervous energy, glancing at Combeferre and away. “I longed for a drink and for the oblivion it would provide, but then I thought instead of you.”
Combeferre stared at him. “Of me,” he repeated quietly.
Grantaire nodded, still not looking at him. “I thought of you, and all that you’ve done for me, and how far I have journeyed over these past several weeks. And suddenly I…” He glanced at Combeferre again, almost shyly. “I found I did not want to drink so badly.”
Combeferre reached forward to grab both of Grantaire’s hands with his own. “Grantaire, that is wonderful to hear,” he said, sincerely. “But do not overplay my role in this. Your journey has been of your own making, and you are the one to sustain its longevity.”
“Whether true or not, I did not just think of you in that sense,” Grantaire said in a low voice. “I asked for time, to work out how I feel, and I still lack a sufficient answer. But I realized I may never have a satisfactory response. And yet my feet carried me to your door as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and I think that to be an answer in and of itself.”
Combeferre’s brow furrowed slightly. “What are you saying?”
“I am saying,” Grantaire started, then shook his head. “I am saying nothing. I am doing this.”
He pulled Combeferre to him and kissed him soundly. Combeferre could not help but return this kiss, wrapping his arms around Grantaire and giving in to what he had so longed for and what he had never dared to hope would come to pass.
As Grantaire had said, perhaps this was an answer in and of itself to whether Combeferre should tell Grantaire. Or at least so he told himself as he pushed the guilt aside and tightened his grip on Grantaire.
——————————
The next morning, the guilt had returned in full force, and Combeferre decided to call on Courfeyrac, who had been there for the beginning of this whole debacle and might have some form of advice to offer, beyond what gnawed at the back of Combeferre’s mind.
“Combeferre!” Courfeyrac said when he answered his door, sounding surprised. “What brings you here on a day such as this? I would have expected you to attend to Grantaire’s to continue assisting him.”
Combeferre shrugged, and Courfeyrac’s smile faltered slightly. “Something has happened,” he said, opening the door wider so that Combeferre could follow him inside. “Involving Grantaire, naturally. Did he rebuff your advances?”
“Quite the opposite, actually,” Combeferre said, sitting down at Courfeyrac’s table and running a tired hand across his face.
Courfeyrac sat as well, slowly smiling. “So you have come to share the good news? My friend, I am glad for you, and for Grantaire! It is not necessarily a match I would have foreseen, but if you are happy…” He trailed off, looking closely at Combeferre. “And yet you are not happy, which leads me to believe there is more to the story.”
Combeferre fixed his gaze on the wall behind Courfeyrac as he said emotionlessly, “I am not the only one harboring affections towards Grantaire. Enjolras is, as well, only he made it clear to me that he has no intention of acting on those affections, that for him the Cause will always be most important.”
“Ah.” Courfeyrac sat back in his seat, tapping his chin thoughtfully. “And I shall assume that Grantaire knows nothing of our Noble Leader’s returned affections?”
Shaking his head, Combeferre said softly, “Enjolras does not wish him to know.”
Courfeyrac frowned. “Has he asked that you not court Grantaire?”
Combeferre sighed and shook his head again. “Quite the opposite. He has given his blessing.”
Now Courfeyrac’s frown deepened. “Then, forgive me, I do not see the problem.”
“It is dishonest, is it not?” Combeferre asked, meeting Courfeyrac’s eyes for the first time. “To withhold such information from Grantaire when he would hunger for this most of all? How can I go about courting him, or even just assisting him with his alcohol problems when I bear a secret such as this one?”
“By knowing that the truth does no one any good,” Courfeyrac told him, sounding almost surprised, as if the answer was apparent.
Frowning, Combeferre returned, “By my estimation, the truth would do Grantaire plenty of good, and perhaps more good than anything he and I could share..”
Courfeyrac leaned forward slightly in his chair. “But it is not your secret to tell, and dismissing the potential between you two off hand because of this would be folly.” Combeferre’s jaw had a stubborn set to it, and Courfeyrac sighed before saying quietly, “Let me rephrase — will the truth change anything? Will it help Grantaire, truly? Or will it only hurt, knowing that Enjolras returns his affections but refuses to act on them?”
Combeferre shook his head. “It matters not. He should be free to choose.”
“Just as Enjolras is free to deny his feelings,” Courfeyrac said evenly. “Grantaire is still free to choose Enjolras — you are not denying him that choice, only withholding a certain incentive for one choice over another.”
“Then it is not an informed choice,” Combeferre insisted. “Education is the only way to ensure that the choice made is fully understood and that the chooser fully consents.”
“And again, what would it change for him to be fully informed?” Courfeyrac challenged. “As it stands, his current choice is between certainty — your feelings for him — and uncertainty — the potential for Enjolras to return his feelings, or not. Even if he knew Enjolras returned his feelings, the choice is still between certainty and the uncertainty of the possibility that Enjolras may or may not choose to act on those feelings.”
Combeferre shook his head again, a million arguments springing to mind despite the fact that he wanted to believe Courfeyrac, who did not give him a chance to voice any of those arguments. “If you tell him, you will only hurt him, yourself, and Enjolras. If you do not tell him, all three of you have a chance at happiness.”
“But the freedom that truth provides above all—” Combeferre protested weakly.
Courfeyrac half-smiled and reached out to cup Combeferre’s cheek, something gentle and a little hesitant in his touch. “Some secrets were meant to be kept, mon ami,” he whispered.
For the second time in as many days, Combeferre found himself unable to reply, not because he could not find the argument — indeed, he saw numerous arguments to that, just as he always did — but because he could not find it in himself to do so. “What am I to do then?”
Shrugging, Courfeyrac leaned back in his chair. “Off-hand? I’d suggest finding Grantaire, spending time with him. You’ve gotten what you wished for, or perhaps did not dare to hope for — perhaps you should try enjoying it.”
Could Combeferre do that? Could he put aside the guilt and the analysis of morality in this situation and simply enjoy the fact that, however uninformed his choice may have been, Grantaire had, for the moment, chosen him?
He did not know, but surely it would not hurt things further to at least try.
So he stood, bid Courfeyrac farewell, and went to Grantaire’s apartment. “Combeferre!” Grantaire said when he opened his door. “I…I did not know if I would see you today.”
Combeferre smiled warmly at him. “I was out this way and thought I would stop in to see how you were doing this morning.”
Grantaire smirked. “Coming to see if I regret our conversation last night?” Combeferre looked at him, startled, and Grantaire’s smile softened. “I do not, if that was what you were wondering. And if it is not what you were wondering, you are assured now in any case.”
Rolling his eyes, Combeferre cleared his throat and said, “I had thought to ask you to accompany me on a stroll. To the jardin, perhaps? It is a lovely day outside, the month being as it is, and I thought your company might be a nice addition.”
“How formal,” Grantaire teased. “Shall I start using vous instead of tu?”
Combeferre leaned in and kissed Grantaire, a swift kiss, conscious of the fact that they stood in Grantaire’s hallway still, where any could see them, and while the laws against sodomy had been long overturned, the stigma remained. “Is that less formal for you?” he asked, a little breathlessly.
Grantaire smiled up at him. “I do believe it is.” He grabbed his jacket and buttoned it over his waistcoat, and took Combeferre’s arm, allowing him to lead him down to the street. “And what shall we talk about on this fine walk?”
“Whatever you wish to discuss,” Combeferre said easily.
Grantaire glanced over at him. “After all this time, how have you not yet grown bored of my rambling?”
“I find your rambling interesting,” Combeferre told him truthfully. “And besides, you allow me the occasional enthusiastic long-winded rant on whatever subject has captured my attention recently.”
Grantaire nodded sagely. “Ah, yes, I do believe that I shall never forget your disquisition on, what was it, the carotid artery?” Combeferre snorted and shook his head, and Grantaire smiled at him. “What a fine pair we make, then, myself with my rambling, you with your enthusiastic discussions of the mundane.”
Combeferre looked at Grantaire fondly. “Indeed,” he said quietly, in far more serious a tone than Grantaire had used. “What a fine pair we make.”
——————————
Over the next few weeks, they grew closer still. Where before Combeferre had frequented Grantaire’s apartment to assist him however he might need it while learning to live without alcohol, now both often found themselves at the other’s apartment, or else staying at the Musain long after everyone else had long since returned to their beds. Combeferre blearily opened his door early one morning for Grantaire to rush in because he had spent a sleepless night contemplating one of Combeferre’s arguments and had discovered its weakness, just as Grantaire answered his door late at night, already dressed in his bedclothes, to be pulled from his apartment to go with Combeferre to view what Combeferre called an astronomical phenomenon.
Grantaire showed Combeferre the best places in Paris, including a decrepit booksellers, where he lost Combeferre inside for the better part of an afternoon. For his part, Combeferre showed Grantaire the meaning of wonder, of discovery, whether found in one of Combeferre’s scientific specimens or in the pages of a book that Grantaire had not yet read. They whiled away the hours not dedicated to the Cause or their other interests together.
Their relationship was more intellectual than anything, especially physical — though they touched, and often, hands brushing against each other, fingers linking, occasional companionable cuddling on Combeferre’s méridienne, even lingering kisses pressed to forehead or temples, only a few times did they truly kiss again, and always initiated by Grantaire. Combeferre did not wish to force him to do anything he did not want to do, and both men were content with the way their relationship progressed. It may not be traditional courtship, but it was hardly a traditional arrangement in the first place.
And they fought — how could they not? As much as Grantaire was Enjolras’s true opposite, he must also be in many ways Combeferre’s, especially regarding the the potential for progress on its own. But where Enjolras and Grantaire’s arguments had often been bitter and caustic, Combeferre and Grantaire’s arguments were more controlled and careful. They were not seeking to prove the other wrong but rather test the other’s tenets, and this led to all manners of discussions.
One such discussion, however, shook Combeferre’s convictions. One evening following a meeting at the Musain in early May, Grantaire asked, “Where does our Noble Leader adjourn to so early in the evening? Does he not have grand plans to devise?”
“The time for planning is almost past,” Courfeyrac told Grantaire as he passed by. “And Enjolras goes to discuss armaments with others.”
Grantaire arched an eyebrow at Combeferre, who shrugged and looked away. Shaking his head slightly, Grantaire took a sip of the water that had taken the place of wine in his cup. “Well, if it is for the greater good,” he muttered, smirking slightly.
Combeferre, however, frowned, and looked back at him. “The greater good?” he questioned. “To hear those words from your mouth when you believe in none of this — I am surprised, to say the least.”
Grantaire shrugged and leaned back in his chair, reaching up to loosen his cravat, sensing an argument in the making. “It is not the ends that I have difficulty in believing, though I do not see them coming to fruition in our lifetime. Certainly a free and prosperous world is as great a fantasy to entertain as any. But the means to getting there — well, I doubt the people shall rise in force now any more than they have these past three decades, but that does not imply the means are not justified by said fantasy.”
Shaking his head, Combeferre leaned forward. “I would not see the means take place if I had any ability to stop them. Education could just as easily achieve our ends, over a more advanced timeline. And yes, yes, I recognize the suffering happening now and the necessity of our actions to alleviate said suffering now, but in my heart I long for a different strategy.” He shook his head again and sat back in his seat. “It seems we offer society only two choices: conflagration or darkness, without acknowledging a third alternative, and that, to me, seems deceitful, if not an outright lie that we perpetrate in hopes of bringing the populace to our revolution.”
Grantaire laughed. “And what is a little deceit in society, when the end results are so longed for? Surely lies are a small price to pay for so sweet a reward.”
Abruptly, Combeferre stood, his face ashen. “Lies are not an easy price for any man to pay, small though they may be,” he said in a low voice. “And the reward not always sweet enough to quell the guilt a man may feel.”
Without another word he grabbed his hat and left, striding away into the night, leaving Grantaire staring after him, bewildered. “What is it you said, capital R?” Bossuet called from across the room, and Grantaire just shook his head.
“I honestly do not know.”
Combeferre strode back to his apartment, battling the sudden guilt that he had managed to keep tamped down over the preceding weeks. For the greater good, he thought bitterly. Was that not exactly what had started this whole mess? Courfeyrac and Enjolras seemed not to mind deceiving Grantaire, as it was for some greater good. Certainly they couched it in terms of happiness, but could true happiness be achieved when one was not even free to learn the truth?
And worse, he had willingly gone along with it, had squashed his own misgivings, believing that what he felt for Grantaire was more important than anything else, more important certainly than the potential pain Grantaire might feel knowing Enjolras shared his affections and still rejected him, the ends, Grantaire’s happiness, his own happiness, justifying his lie. And now, to hear such an argument parroted glibly back at him by Grantaire…
It was too much to bear.
By the time he had arrived back at his building, his pace had slowed, as had his breathing and the pounding of his heart, and indeed, he felt a little foolish, for his storming out if not for the sentiment that inspired him to do so. Perhaps, though, this would lead to the conversation he should have had many weeks ago now; perhaps it was time to end this charade once and for all.
He was not entirely surprised when not even twenty minutes later a tentative knock sounded on his door, and was even less surprised when it was Grantaire who entered, looking a little nervous. “I came to apologize,” he said, without preamble. “I know not what offense I gave, but I assure you, it was accidental.”
Combeferre shook his head. “The apology is mine to make,” he said quietly. “My reaction was unjustified. I—”
He broke off, debating now that Grantaire was in front of him how much he should say, if anything. “Combeferre?” Grantaire said quietly, his tone soft and gentle and far more than Combeferre deserved.
“It is nothing,” Combeferre said stiffly, turning away from Grantaire as he added, “I do sometimes wonder whether I have done the right thing.”
Grantaire reached out and touched his shoulder tentatively. “I do not believe in much,” he told Combeferre quietly. “But I do not believe that you have done wrong by your country or your fellow man, and I believe you an honorable man with honorable intentions, and those intentions may yet be rewarded by the rise of the people.”
Combeferre closed his eyes, for of course Grantaire thought he referred to the revolution, to the Cause — how could Grantaire even think that Combeferre referred to him, to them? “Of course,” Combeferre said, turning to Grantaire and taking both his hands in his. “You are absolutely right. I overreacted.”
Grantaire smiled up at him. “You did get very serious on me for a moment.” He reached up and cupped Combeferre’s cheek, and Combeferre could not help but lean into the touch. “I know how seriously you take the education of our countrymen, of all people, but do not forget to enjoy what little moments of peace we have together.”
Combeferre lifted his own hand to rest it on top of Grantaire’s. “I could never,” he told him softly. “I treasure these moments most of all.”
“Good,” Grantaire said, suddenly brisk, his eyes sparkling with merriment. “For I believe you said earlier this evening that you found another error in the Dictionary of the Academy, and I know nothing brings you joy like discussing such faulty texts.”
Laughing, Combeferre let Grantaire pull him in the direction of the settee, his guilt, neither assuaged nor forgotten, again tamped down in Grantaire’s presence.
But then June dawned, and with it, the statement, “General Lamarque is dead”, which changed everything.
They were all gathered at the Musain, and the room went silent at the announcement, all eyes on Enjolras, who seemed almost frozen for a moment, profiled against the fire, his head bowed. “Comrades,” he said slowly. “If ever we have been awaiting a sign to rally the people, this is it. General Lamarque, a man who spoke for the people, now lies dead, his voice silenced, but we will not be silenced in his stead.” Indeed, Enjolras’s voice grew steadily as he looked around the room. “His death brings forward a moment of clarity, a moment of necessity, and a moment of opportunity. The grief our comrades feel will not be in vain, for we shall channel that grief into anger, and anger into action. His funeral day must be the day our barricades arise!”
“Hear, hear!” someone shouted, and Enjolras nodded officiously.
“We will fight for our fellow countrymen, stand for our fellow countrymen, even die for our fellow countrymen, if the need arises! The blood of the martyrs will paint the streets with the color of our Cause! Who will stand with me, who will fight with me, who will die with me?”
The entire room burst into enthusiastic cheers, save for two: Combeferre and Grantaire. Combeferre and Grantaire’s eyes met across the room, Combeferre as concerned for Grantaire’s reaction to this news as to anything. Grantaire just smiled, a twisted, horrible approximation of his usual, cheerful grin, and leaned forward to pluck Bossuet’s bottle of wine off of the table, raising it in a mock salute before lifting it to his lips, Combeferre’s heart breaking in the process.
——————————-
The next few days passed in a blur of preparations, final touches put on the plans established months ago, waiting only for the proper time to be enacted, and Combeferre was too busy to dwell on Grantaire, on Grantaire’s return to drinking, and what this meant for them. Did it matter much what it meant for them if Combeferre could find himself shot down by a National Guardsman in the coming days?
Still, he could not put the thought from his mind, not when he looked for Grantaire at every turn only to not find him. Finally, when he had a free moment, he went to Grantaire’s apartment, but did not find him there. Instead, he found him at the Musain, laughing and joking with Joly and Bossuet as if nothing was wrong, save for the bottle prominent at his right hand. “Combeferre!” Joly called, beckoning to him. “Join us, if you are not too busy with your preparations!”
Grantaire looked up when Joly spoke, and his smile faded. Combeferre could see what the others either could or would not, the dark circles around Grantaire’s eyes and the unhealthy pallor of his skin. Clearly Grantaire had not taken well to drinking again. Combeferre cleared his throat, his eyes not leaving Grantaire’s. “I am afraid I have not the time for merriment at this hour. I merely wondered if I could speak with Grantaire for a moment.”
Joly and Bossuet exchanged glances, and Grantaire stood, a little unsteadily. “Has Enjolras sent you to scold me for my lack of involvement?” he asked lightly, knowing full well that was not why Combeferre was there. “He would have better luck coming himself if he wished to convince me.”
Both Joly and Bossuet laughed, and Grantaire allowed Combeferre to lead him to a quiet corner of the café. “You know very well why I am here,” Combeferre said, quietly. “I come to ask you not to give up everything you have worked so hard for over these past few weeks. What will happen will happen, but you do not need to return to alcohol.”
“Enjolras indeed would have had better luck with this mission,” Grantaire replied coolly. “I drink to forget life, and to forget that life is about to end.”
Combeferre shook his head. “Grantaire—” he asked, reaching out for Grantaire, who jerked his arm out of Combeferre’s reach.
“Do not patronize me,” Grantaire said in a low voice. “None of it matters now, do you not see that? Enjolras will die. This is no mere theoretical revolution now, to be discussed in back rooms among the fumes of wine and haze of smoke. This is war coming, or do you think the National Guard will merely allow the barricades to rise without bringing out their own cannons and artillery?” He shook his head, his face flushed, and spat, “Enjolras will die. And if he does, there is no point in any of this.”
Combeferre recoiled as if Grantaire had struck him, his expression tightening. “Then I see my efforts have been in vain,” he said, stiffly. “I bid you good day.”
He turned on heel and left, making it outside before the tears that pricked at the corners of his eyes could fall, and by the time he had returned to Enjolras’s, the tears had been replaced by anger and by a hollow feeling in his chest.
He had known that Grantaire did not fully return his feelings, but now, the truth was as plain as day — Grantaire did not love him. Grantaire had never loved him. How could he, when Combeferre was no Enjolras? And everything that Combeferre had tried to do, to accomplish, had been worthless.
Luckily, Combeferre was never one for brooding, and turned his attention back to the task at hand and the preparations underway, leaving the hurt and anger and heartbreaking pain that rose in his chest to be dealt with another day.
——————————
But the prospect of another day, of course, became limited, and when the barricades rose, Combeferre rose with them, shouting and cheering with the rest. And when reality set in, when they all were finally situated at the Corinthe, only then did Combeferre turn his attention from the gun in his hand and two in his belt back to Grantaire, watching from the sidelines as Grantaire drank himself to near oblivion before all but begging Enjolras to let him stay at the barricade.
It was everything Combeferre had not wanted for Grantaire. Every ill advised decision Combeferre had made, every lie he had told, it had been in the hopes that Grantaire would not be a part of this, here at the end of all things. But as with all of Combeferre’s plans, it seemed a dashed hope now.
Still, just as Combeferre was not willing to give up on his hopes for the future, he was not willing to give up on Grantaire, even now, and so late that night, when the fighting had ceased and everyone sensible had turned to sleeping, he crept back inside the Corinthe, shaking Grantaire to wake him and sitting beside him at the table. Grantaire blinked blearily at him. “Combeferre,” he said slowly, his voice soft and sad, and not as drunk as Combeferre might have expected. “Why have you come?”
“To plead with you, one final time: leave this place. The barricade is no place for you. It is a place of lofty ideals and the hopes of a world that you have never believed in, and it will be painted with the blood of those who believe. But you have never believed, and I would not see your blood needlessly shed.” He hastened to add, when he saw the look on Grantaire’s face, “I would not forbid your presence here, nor would I ever tell you that you disgrace what we do here, because I do not believe that, nor have I ever. But I would wish you to see you live, you most of all.”
Grantaire managed a small smile, though it did not meet his eyes, and shook his head slowly. “I cannot leave,” he told Combeferre quietly. “While still Enjolras draws breath, here I must remain, pathetic though that may seem.”
Combeferre inclined his head, his heart pounding in his ears. A not small part of him considered telling Grantaire that Enjolras loved him — here, in this place, what was there to lose by telling? What was there to be gained by keeping this secret for one moment longer?
But looking into Grantaire’s eyes, Combeferre found he could not, even here. There was a chance, however small, that Grantaire might live through this instead of dying with Enjolras or dying for Enjolras, and no matter how slim the chance, it was a chance that Combeferre was willing to take. Instead, he cleared his throat and told him, sincerely, “For my sake, then — because I love you.”
It was the first time that he had uttered those words to Grantaire, and Grantaire did not look surprised to hear them, though he seemed pained for a moment. “And how I wish it was enough, for both our sakes,” Grantaire whispered.
Combeferre nodded, slowly, for he wished it, too, in the depths of his heart. Grantaire reached out for him and Combeferre went readily to his embrace, allowing Grantaire to kiss him, assumedly for the last time, his hands balling in Grantaire’s waistcoat, as if by holding him tightly enough this might all be a nightmare from which they could both wake.
Instead, they both pulled reluctantly away, though Grantaire tangled his fingers with Combeferre’s. “You must make me a promise,” he said in a low voice. “If somehow you survive this, you must promise to take care of yourself. You will meet someone else, you will fall in love, and I want that for you, and I want you to want that for yourself. I want you to live, Combeferre, I want every dream you have shared with me to come true.”
“I want the same thing for you,” Combeferre said, his voice breaking. He took a deep breath and nodded. “I promise.” He squeezed Grantaire’s hand. “And will you promise the same, mon ami? Should you survive the barricade, will you live life as it is meant to be lived? Will you again give up alcohol and become the man with whom I fell in love?”
Grantaire shrugged and looked away, his grip on Combeferre’s hand loosening. “I do not know what life would hold for me outside of this barricade,” he said softly. “And I know not if I will have a chance to find out.” He managed a small smile and squeezed Combeferre’s hand. “Now I must return to my slumber, before the wine loosens my tongue even further, and you must return to the barricade before you are missed.”
Combeferre stood before asking, a little desperately, “There was never a choice for you, was there?”
Now Grantaire smiled slightly. “Ah, my friend, even now you worry about the freedom of choice. There was always a choice — there always is. But my choice was made long ago, and I cannot change course now.”
Combeferre nodded and bent to kiss Grantaire’s forehead. “No more than I can change course,” he said in a quiet voice. “Sleep well, Grantaire.”
“And you,” Grantaire replied gently. “When sleep should take you.”
Combeferre slipped back outside, at once overwhelmed by emotion and yet somehow finding his burdens had been lifted. He had done what he could, none could argue otherwise now, and even if the result was not what he wished, even if still he withheld from Grantaire what he should have told him many weeks past, he still went to what fitful sleep the barricade could provide feeling less guilty than he had in weeks.
And the next day, when, bending to lift a wounded soldier on the barricade, Combeferre was transfixed by three blows from a bayonet, he managed to look up at the sky for one last time, his last thought the hope he still had that Grantaire, one way or another, might find it in himself to be free.
Café Society
fic by lizamezzo
art by orlofsky
(warning for alcohol and innuendo; also, illustrations on this fic are throughout the text!)
****
“I am not going to Momus.”
“But —“
“No.”
“Musichetta, my love, the plan—“
“Was made by you, not me. I’ll prepare a hero’s welcome for your return, but my foot does not cross the threshold of Café Momus. Especially not in these shoes.”
“Very well, dearest. Though I shall be thinking of you. I wish you could come. Grantaire would love to see you there, I know. It’s his favourite place, you see, and—”
“Grantaire has no idea this is even happening, does he?”
“Well, no. It’s a surprise. It took ages for me and Bossuet to work out when his birthday was, he’s always been so close-mouthed. About that, that is— obviously not about anything else.”
“Yes, ‘close-mouthed’ is not a term I’d apply to Grantaire in the normal course of things.” Musichetta smiled irresistibly, and Joly felt something he was sure presaged a syncope. “Give him my very best wishes, and come back in one piece— you and Bossuet both. I’ll be expecting you.” She leaned in to kiss him. Definitely a syncope, Joly thought, but worth it, in the end.
************
If you wanted a table at Café Momus on a Saturday in June, you had to arrive unfashionably early to stake your claim. The canny customer would seek out the upstairs room: a convivial place with its large windows and ornate plasterwork stained by years of smoke from candle, lamp and pipe. Joly, entering, found Courfeyrac and Bossuet already seated at a table that looked— to Joly’s worried eye— optimistically large. After embracing Courfeyrac (who was wearing a new scent, he noted) and planting bisous on Bossuet’s rough cheek, Joly ventured: “My dears, do we know who else is coming along?”
“Well, I’ve invited all of our crowd, of course,” Bossuet replied thoughtfully. “Enjolras gave me a stern look and told me he had work. Feuilly is teaching tonight— French to his Polish group, you know.”
“Marius was off on one of his mysterious long walks, so I left him a note at that ghastly tenement of his.” Courfeyrac sipped his coffee. “Combeferre has a shift at the Necker. But Jean Prouvaire said he’d be along.”
“Prouvaire’s coming? Good, I owe his bony poetic arse a kick or two.” The others looked up to see Bahorel striding to the table, his jacket under his arm. His hair was pomaded and tied back neatly for once, Joly saw, and he was wearing a miraculously clean shirt.
Across the table, Courfeyrac had his hands over his eyes. “Is that waistcoat… new?”
“You like it?” Bahorel posed, smiling. “Chinese silk! Expensive, mordious, but I had to have it. Dragons, you see?”
Risking a closer glance at Bahorel’s midriff, Joly discerned golden serpentine forms, clawed and whiskered, writhing across the gleaming scarlet fabric like spermatozoa under a microsocope.
“Why this desire to kick the arse of Jean Prouvaire?” Bossuet was asking.
“Firstly,” replied Bahorel, “because at our last conversation, he implied that I could not if I tried. Secondly, because on the morning following that conversation, I awoke to find my inadequacies immortalised in a ballade in the style of Villon, inscribed upon various parts of my person in what I am assured was the finest India ink. Thirdly, because the aforesaid arse offends me by its shapeliness. The curvature of those twin hemispheres is far too perfect to exist in this city, I’m sure you’ll agree. If, as the Church Fathers would have us believe, we live in a world where perfection is denied us for the sins of Adam, then the arse of Jean Prouvaire is a living blasphemy. If, on the other hand, we dwell in a chaotic and godless universe, where all things are haphazardly shaped by the mindless actions of primordial forces, then nothing so perfect as the arse of Jean Prouvaire should exist at all. How am I supposed to live in proximity to an arse which both disproves and affirms the existence of God?”
Courfeyrac passed Bahorel a freshly poured coffee and the sugar bowl. “My dear Bahorel, if you are resolved not to make a lawyer, then perhaps theology is the career for you. Think of the Sundays that would be enlivened by such a sermon.”
“Perhaps,” mused Bossuet, “Jean Prouvaire’s posterior exists as a sign of divine benevolence, like that other arc which occasionally decorates the sky?”
Bahorel finished stirring and struck the spoon vengefully against the rim of his cup. “All I’m saying is that when the revolution comes, those with perfect arses will be first against the wall.”
“I’m sure that will be of great comfort to the sans-culottes,” muttered Joly. Bossuet gave him a perfectly filthy grin—there’s that syncope again— and murmured back, “Is Musichetta coming?”
“No,” said Joly sadly. He related their earlier conversation to Bossuet. “I don’t know why she’s so dead set against this place. As far as I know, she hasn’t been here in years.”
Bossuet shrugged eloquently. “Best not to enquire, I find. If it’s an old love affair, all we should do is feel enraged and jealous for no good reason. Let Musichetta be Musichetta, that’s the best way.”
“Just as you say, my dear. Now: shall I go and fetch the man of the hour?” At Bossuet’s nod, Joly rose, made his excuses and went to seek out Grantaire.
*********
After drawing a blank at the Corinthe and the Musain, Joly found himself at the door of Grantaire’s lodgings just off the Place Saint-Michel. A word with the concierge bought him a disapproving glance and passage to Grantaire’s door. Some while after his hesitant knock, the door grudgingly opened.
“You do me wrong to take me out of the grave.”
“My dear Grantaire. Happy birthd—“
“I had just attained the blessed state known to the heathens as Nirvana and to the poets as sweet, blissful unconsciousness. I was dreaming, you infidel, dreaming— that sunny dome, those caves of ice— a vast harem of odalisques bent on discovering the inmost secrets of my languishing soul— and then your knuckles at my door, and the whole damned thing dissolves into the murk of memory. You are Alexander, and my palace of dreams your Persepolis.”
“You should write a poem about it,” said Joly, momentarily struck.
“Been done. Besides, if I pick up a pen I might be ranked beside Jean Prouvaire in the annals of futility. Come in, come in, don’t stand there like some underendowed Herm waiting for the tender mercy of Alcibiades. Or of the concierge, for that matter, who runs this place like the Conciergerie. Come in.”
***************
Joly and Grantaire strolled forth under leaden summer skies, feeling the occasional spitting drop; as they were crossing the Île de la Cité they saw a blue-white flash and heard a nearly simultaneous crack of thunder. All at once the heavens opened, drenching them and driving them to seek the scanty shelter of a chestnut tree.
Joly put his fingers to his wrist, but his pulse remained steady, if a shade faster than usual. Another flash, a pause of exactly two heartbeats, then another thunderclap. They were out of the sheeting rain, but fat drops from the leaves above still spattered them. The only poor souls in the street hurried by with their shoulders hunched. All but one: down the street came a slight-figured young man, apparently of student age, with his jacket plastered to his body and his arms open to the heavens. There was something of the sublime in the skyward stare of his wide blue eyes.
“Oh, would you look at that idiot.”
“That’s no idiot, that’s Jean Prouvaire!”
“I stand by my opinion—”
“Prouvaire! Poet! Here!”
A moment later, they were both locked in the affectionate, dripping embrace of Jean Prouvaire. “Jehan, Jehan,” murmured Joly against his soaking shoulder— “what on earth are you doing?”
“Enjoying the storm. Isn’t it beautiful? No one looks up during a rainstorm. I can’t think why. Such lightning, my Jolllly! What thunder in the heavens! At such moments, I feel truly alive.”
“Would you gaze heavenwards while an old wife empties her chamberpot on your head, since you do so when God does it?”
“My dear Grantaire, if chamberpots caused such divine cloud formations, perhaps we’d all raise our eyes. Even you. Happy birthday, by the way.” Grantaire remained absolutely motionless as the poet leaned forward to kiss his cheek.
Into the brief silence, Joly said “We were just going to Café Momus for a drink. Join us?”
“I— yes, of course.” Prouvaire gave Joly a conspiratorial smile. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Shall we go, then? It seems to be easing up.”
Indeed the most violent part of the shower was over, but still, Grantaire and Joly were almost as soaked as Prouvaire by the time the three arrived at Café Momus. At the door, Joly drew Prouvaire aside.
“I should have said something earlier: Bahorel’s here, and I think he wants to kick your—“
“Yes, well. Many have tried.” Jean Prouvaire gave him a smile. “Thank you for the warning, but I’m certain it was all bluster on his part.”
Grantaire grimaced. “That Bahorel is bluster incarnate. A paper tiger.”
“No, an unexploded grenade. But believe me, I know how to defuse him.”
Their wet shoes made a sextet of squeaks as they climbed the stairs and crossed the old floorboards of the upstairs room. From the table came a full-throated cry of greeting, the pop of Champagne and one or two handfuls of confetti, which fluttered down to decorate Grantaire’s damp hair and shoulders.
“Idiots.” He grinned. “Beloved idiots. Let’s drink.”
******************
Prouvaire and Bahorel had eyed each other like feral cats for a moment; then Bahorel had embraced the poet, lifted him off the ground, and murmured something in his ear; they were now deep in talk.
“While you were away,” murmured Bossuet to Joly, “we had to defend the table. From them.” He nodded to the corner by the piano where three young men stood, drinks in hand, favouring the revellers with the odd disdainful glance. “They kept insisting that since there was no one in your chairs at that moment, they ought to have the right to sit in them, or at least take them away. And I believe they would have, had not Bahorel intervened.”
“Devoted as I am to the rights of my fellow man,” Courfeyrac put in, “it pained me to refuse them. But, as I said to them, just because a chair is empty does not mean it is unoccupied.”
“And if our numbers are lessened,” added Bahorel, “those left behind must fight all the harder. Thus, it fell to me to kick righteous arse on your behalf.”
“No actual blows were exchanged,” Bossuet clarified. “Bahorel convinced them of the justice of our cause by… er, standing up. And also by the excellence of his rhetoric.”
“A true loss to the legal profession, our Bahorel,” sighed Joly.
“Avocat jamais!” Bahorel raised his glass to Bossuet, who met it with his own. “Jamais.”
Courfeyrac looked up. “I say. They’re coming this way.”
“They want some after all?” Bahorel brightened.
But Grantaire was on his feet. “Ha, I knew you wastrels wouldn’t be far. My friends and sundry assembled fools and rogues, may I present: Rodolphe, slinger of ink; Marcel, defiler of canvases; and Schaunard, creator of cacophony. And these are the Friends of the ABC, a perfectly innocuous society for the education of children.”
“So we can sit at your table now?” asked the shortest of the three in what he doubtless thought was a tone of light mockery. “Is there, perchance, a seat for a poet among your fancy law student friends?”
“Sit by me, poet,” said Jean Prouvaire with a smile. Bahorel ran his thumbs over his knuckles as the new arrivals helped themselves to Champagne, finishing the bottle.
“A piano bench for me,” announced Schaunard, draining his glass and scampering to the far corner, where he struck up a tune on the battered and tinkly rosewood upright.
“He’s good,” Courfeyrac admitted. “So how do you know Grantaire, then?”
“We met on the day of submissions to the Académie…oh, some years ago now.” Marcel smiled. “A month later we met again, and discovered that both our masterpieces had come back bearing the dreaded capital R. So we drank to drown our misery; by eight o’clock we were friends, and by midnight sworn brothers.”
“And you are a painter, now, by profession?”
“Well— I entertain hopes that someday my genius will be recognised.”
“How many times did you paint over that Passage of the Red Sea and resubmit it as something else?” Grantaire broke in.
“Only two times. …Maybe three. But you, your still lives were astonishing— your studies of—“
“Oh, come on. They were shit.”
“No art is shit!”
“Most art is shit. Mine certainly was. Tell me you don’t look at your work from five years ago and feel consumed with shame at its utter, irredeemably awfulness.”
“It was the work of a different artist, but no less worthy. My Red Sea never sold, but it still has pride of place on my wall.”
“Hush. I’ve come to terms with the fact that my paintings were shit. You clearly haven’t.”
“And do you still paint?” Marcel asked. “There,” he said into the sudden, table-wide silence. “If you have no faith in your own art, what do you have?”
“The satisfaction of not wasting pigment,” replied Grantaire tranquilly. “And you— if you can’t even recognise shit when you produce it, then how do you ever expect to paint anything that’s not shit?”
“I believe that what Grantaire is saying,” intervened Jean Prouvaire, “is that dissatisfaction can be as much of a spur to the artist as aspiration. I think you’re both correct. One must never avert one’s gaze from the distant Parnassus—“ this with a nod to Marcel— “yet distant it remains, no matter how we strive.”
“And what would you know about it, lawyer?” demanded Rodolphe.
During the heartbeat’s pause that followed, Joly realised Schaunard had stopped playing the piano.
“Only what a lifetime of lines written, scratched out and rewritten can teach me.” Prouvaire’s voice was soft.
“All I’m saying,” continued Rodolphe with some truculence, “is that none of you should claim to know what it is to be a true artist. None of you. To be a true artist is to serve the Muse to the exclusion of all else, no matter the cost to yourself. Have you gone without food because the journal turned down your article that week? Have you been thrown out of your cold, solitary room because you couldn’t make the rent?”
“Actually, I—“
“Shh, Bossuet.”
“Have any of you,” continued Rodolphe, warming to his theme, “had to burn your furniture because you couldn’t afford firewood?”
“Speaking of which, Rodolphe my friend,” broke in Grantaire, “don’t you have a millionaire uncle? The one who made his fortune by inventing that stove— what’s it called—“
“Yes! He would have employed me to write proposals for his new stove design, but my poet’s honour could not bear it. I fled his house by the window.”
“Without completing the work he’d paid you for.”
“Indeed.”
“And,” pursued Grantaire, “as I remember, that fee, which might have seen off your landlord for a number of months, was spent in three memorable evenings— one of them here.”
“What’s your point, Grantaire?”
“My point is that you, Rodolphe, are no better than the rest of us. But cheer up: you’re also no worse. Do you know, our Laigle here once spent no less than five louis on dinner with a… lady? His sleeping quarters were in a hallway at the time. My hallway.”
“That was long ago!” Bossuet protested. “My misspent youth.”
“Anyway, Bossuet’s no lawyer. Rodolphe, you two ought to get along fine. Here’s Courfeyrac with a fresh bottle. Everyone kiss the Widow Cliquot and make up. I, Lord of Misrule and Master of the Floral Games, command it. Rodolphe, Prouvaire, you’ll drink each other’s health or I’ll set Bahorel on both of you.”
“I’ve got to kick at least one poet’s arse tonight,” murmured Bahorel as the cork popped.
“Keep dreaming,” replied Jean Prouvaire, sotto voce.
As Courfeyrac poured, the door opened.
“Speaking of floral games!” Grantaire raised his glass. “To beauty, wit, and artistry— and virtue— in the charming persons of Citizens Floréal and Boissy!”
The new arrivals were unanimously hailed. Serviettes were handed to them to dry their hair, their wet shawls hung ceremoniously over chairs; glasses were procured for them, and Champagne poured. Irma Boissy took a glass to the piano for Schaunard, and the two of them began a song:
“Chevaliers de la table ronde,
Goûtons voir si le vin est bon.”
Boissy’s voice had a pleasing stridency which had made her a popular guest at the cafés chantant. Schaunard, as he played, sang harmonies in a high tenor. Soon the whole room was singing, with Grantaire standing on the table conducting wildly with a limp rose from one of the vases.
“Behold the Parisian Beethoven,” proclaimed Jean Prouvaire, gazing upwards. Joly had to admit the resemblance was uncanny; Grantaire’s hair had always resisted discipline and was now in open rebellion.
“To Beethoven!” Joly raised his glass, and Prouvaire clinked his against it.
“Turgid German rubbish,” said Rodolphe loudly.
Marcel smiled. “Well, I suppose it’s good enough for lawyers.”
Lightning flashed outside the dark windows. Joly turned to Marcel and Rodolphe. “Listen. Sneer at us all you like for being bourgeois. Most of us will be lawyers, it’s true. But remember that we are trying to change things for the better, and that will take lawyers as well as poets! It did in ’89, and it will tomorrow.” He realised he was shouting to be heard over the increasingly cacophonous singing.
“I understand the impulse to exist outside society,” said Prouvaire. “Society is a gilded carriage on which the rich ride in comfort while the poor either pull till they drop or are crushed beneath its wheels. Will you watch and do nothing, or will you join us?”
“Join you in what?” Rodolphe’s eyes narrowed.
“There are those who would upset the cart and lay a new road where all may walk side by side. It won’t be easy, and it will take courage. Audacity. But we believe Paris is with us.”
Rodolphe lowered his eyes to his glass. “I’m just a poet. Tonight I drink Champagne, tomorrow water. I take each day as it comes.”
“And you, Marcel?”
“I depict acts of heroism on canvas— or I try.” Marcel smiled wryly. “And fail, mostly. Grantaire was right. And if I tried to be a revolutionary hero, I’d fail at that too. Now, a failed artist is a wretched creature, but a failed revolutionary is… in an even worse case. Of the two, I know which I’d rather be.”
Grantaire had noticed their conversation, and pointed his floral baton menacingly. “Sing, you bastards!”
“Sur ma tombe, je veux qu’on inscrive:
Ici-gît le roi des buveurs.”
Across the table, Bossuet reached around Grantaire’s waist to unfasten his buttons while Courfeyrac and Bahorel tugged down on one trouser leg each. The room outroared the thunderstorm as Grantaire’s trousers descended. Nothing daunted, Grantaire sang on, rose in hand, the table shaking as he conducted like one possessed, his nether baton bouncing in time:
“La morale de cette histoire,
C’est qu’il faut boire avant d’mourir!”
The song ended with falsetto high notes from everyone and a protracted cheer. Grantaire, trousers still around his ankles, bowed theatrically in all directions and was pelted with flowers snatched from the vases on the tables. His bare posterior was towards the door when it opened, and he turned at the draft of wet, chill air.
Enjolras, his hair soaked, stood in the doorway.
Thunder echoed from without as he stepped forwards. “Courfeyrac? I went to your lodgings, and Marius told me you were here. Did you forget to leave me that article? You know we go to press tonight.”
“Oh.” Courfeyrac stood up, looking guilty. “A thousand apologies! I meant to get it to you, of course, but…” He fished in his jacket pocket, extracted a folded page. “Here it is. I’m sorry.” He handed the paper to Enjolras, who stood entirely still beside the table, not looking up or acknowledging Grantaire in any way. “May we pour you some Champagne?”
“No, thank you. I must be going. Till tomorrow, then?”
“Till tomorrow.” Courfeyrac leaned forward as if for bisous, but Enjolras had already turned on his heel and made for the door, unhurried, straight-backed.
As it closed behind him, Grantaire raised an empty glass to the empty air. “Happy birthday to me.”
***************
Jean Prouvaire had procured another bottle of Widow Cliquot’s finest and Schaunard was doing his heroic best at the piano, but the party was no longer gai. Grantaire was sunk in a profound melancholy. Prouvaire and Bahorel were seated on either side of him, talking to him in an undertone; Rodolphe and Marcel had joined Schaunard at the piano.
Joly found himself sitting next to the girl Grantaire had called Floréal. “May I pour you a glass, mademoiselle?” he asked.
“Yes. Thank you.” She was silent as he poured, watching the bubbles rise. “Tell me: the man who arrived just now and left so quickly, who is he?”
“A friend of mine, and of many of the people at this table.”
“But not Grantaire?”
“I… I don’t know. They know each other. We all know them both. But it’s true, they are… not friends.”
“What is his name?”
“Enjolras.”
“Ah.” She paused. “I have heard Grantaire speak that name. Never happily, but never with malice either. With sadness, and sometimes anger. It’s an unusual name.”
“He’s an unusual person. I think you’re right, by the way— that’s the thing about Grantaire: that no matter how unhappy he is, he’s never malicious.”
“Yes. He’s always been like that.”
“May I ask where you know each other from?”
She picked up her glass, from which she still had not drunk. “We were children together. Not related by blood, but he’s been more of a brother to me than my brothers. I knew him before he was Grantaire, and before I was Floréal.” She took a sip of Champagne. “I sometimes wonder: had I not become Floréal, what else might I have been? And I think he wonders the same, about being Grantaire.”
Joly glanced across the table. “I can’t imagine him not being Grantaire, but…”
“Yes? Go on.”
“I don’t… I don’t know whether he enjoys it much.”
She shook her head, then put a hand on the table. “Will you pardon me? I should go talk to him.”
“Of course.” Joly pushed his chair back to let her pass. She made her way over to Grantaire and laid her hand on his shoulder; he seemed to tense at the touch, but then looked up at her and said something Joly couldn’t hear. She seated herself by Grantaire as Bahorel cheerfully made room; Joly passed her glass along.
“Quite a girl,” said Bossuet, settling into the seat beside Joly. “Reminds me of Musichetta in some ways.” Silently, they raised their glasses and drank to her.
“She doesn’t talk much, does she,” mused Joly, “about who she was before she was Musichetta?”
“No,” said Bossuet, “I’ve noticed that too. She talks about her childhood and about recent years, but almost nothing in between. I suppose it’s not so extraordinary; after all, before I was Bossuet, I was no one of interest. Still, I’d imagine she knows most of our life histories by now.”
“Yes. She knows more about me than anyone except you.” Joly knew it was true as he said it.
Bossuet failed to hide a smile. “I’d never thought of it like that, but I think I might say the same.”
Briefly, clandestinely, Joly clasped his friend’s warm hand under the table.
“We should be getting back, shouldn’t we?” Bossuet said after a pause. “She’ll be waiting.”
“I know, but I hate to leave Grantaire feeling like this. We invited him here, and now…”
“What shall we do to cheer him up, then? More singing?”
“Definitely not more singing.”
“Hm. How about brandy?”
“Brandy could work.”
When Joly returned with a bottle of Armagnac and a tray of glasses, he found himself intercepted en route to the table by the painter Marcel.
“Ex-scuse me, friend.” He’s drunker than me, Joly realised, and that takes some doing. “Not to eavesdrop or any-such-thing, but did I hear you mention— just now— the name Musette?”
“My colleague and I were discussing an acquaintance of ours, called Musichetta. A similar name. I can see where the mistake arises.” Joly attempted to step forward; Marcel still blocked his way.
“Are you sure it’s not the same girl? ‘Cause if it is, you want to steer clear of her.” He tapped a finger unsteadily to the side of his nose. “One who knows, you see. Brotherly advice. Don’t trust ‘er. She’s a viper. She’ll eat your heart—“
“I’m sorry, but you’re mistaken. I was speaking of a different lady altogether. Please excuse me.” Joly dodged around a nearby table and turned back toward his friends.
“She’s Italian.” He heard the painter’s voice aimed at his back. “Her real name’s Luisa.”
Joly was glad the man couldn’t see his face. By the time he got to the table, he’d mastered it— he hoped.
“My dear Grantaire, a glass of brandy?”
Grantaire looked up. His good ugly face split into a smile. “Joly! If you’ll have one with me.”
“I brought glasses for everyone.” Joly began pouring. Hands perfectly steady, now.
“Joly… Jolllly, my boon companion, I have a favour to beseech.”
“Beseech away, o comrade in arms.”
Grantaire put a hand on Joly’s shoulder and met his eyes. “Let’s never do this again.”
“What, come to Momus?”
“God knows there’s better drinking-holes in Paris, but no. I mean, no more of these futile celebrations of growing old. No more birthdays.” He patted Joly’s shoulder and let go. “It is unseemly, after all, for immortals such as we to mark the paltry passing of the years.”
Joly passed Grantaire a glass of brandy. “Are we growing old, or are we immortal? Make up your mind, old soak.”
“Both. We are Zeno’s tortoise, crawling endlessly towards a grave we’ll never reach. Or perhaps we shall share the fate of Tithonus, who withered and grew decrepit but was denied the mercy of death, while the object of his affections remained as fresh as morning dew.”
“…I’m sorry, Grantaire. I’m sure he meant no offense. He’s just… got a lot on his mind.”
“No.” Grantaire downed his brandy and made a small “ah” sound. “No, he’s Enjolras. Disdain flows in his blood vessels, mingled with divine ichor. Were he otherwise, he would not be Enjolras, and my heart would be free as air.”
Joly pondered a moment. He had never considered Enjolras a scornful sort; it was only Grantaire, Joly realised, to whom he showed contempt. Joly searched for words. “He… he sees the world a certain way. He lives here among us, but his mind is always bent toward the future, the Republic. I think sometimes he forgets that that’s not as easy for others as it is for him.”
“It’s not. Easy for him, that is,” said Grantaire, his voice rough and low. “You can see, can’t you, how it takes all he has, all the flame of his spirit? His disdain is for those who don’t give everything.”
“I don’t give everything,” said Joly. “There’s always more I could be doing. I think that’s true of all of us. You don’t have to devote yourself entirely to the Republic, as Enjolras does; I think he’s the only one who can do that. But there’s a generosity about him, too. He finds common ground with anyone who’ll give something.”
“Yes. And he rightly sees that I give nothing. That I have nothing to give. That I can’t even perceive the Republic, or imagine it. Oh, I tried, in the early days— to please him, I tried. I read my Robespierre and my Hébert, I memorised the Constitution. But every time I try to act as though I believe, it’s a disaster.” Grantaire poured himself another brandy. “Perhaps there’s some phrenological bump absent from my skull: the seat of belief in invisible things. There were times when I thought I could see the Republic through him, as a window lets in the light. But I was wrong. I can only see him. And he sees me. He’s the only one who sees me for what I am.” In Grantaire’s hand, the glass was shaking.
Joly gently took the glass, set it down, and clasped Grantaire’s hand in both of his.
“I think, after all these years, I know something of what you are too,” he said. “I think that’s true of Lesgles and me both. Call us whatever you please, but you’ll get no disdain from us.”
“It’s true.” Bossuet was there, like a falcon to the wrist. “You’re stuck with us. A terrible fate, but you’ll cope. Now,what shall we drink to?”
“To no more birthdays.”
“To many more birthdays, because as long as you know us, this is something you have to put up with.”
“Then you name the toast, Aigle de Meaux.”
Bossuet raised his glass and looked round the table. “Citizens, charge your glasses! What shall we drink to?”
“To life!” cried Courfeyrac.
“To art,” said Marcel.
“To poetry!” shouted Rodolphe.
“To the future,” said Prouvaire.
“To revolution,” murmured Bahorel.
“To peace,” said Irma Boissy firmly.
“To friendship.” Floréal was smiling.
“To harmony,” Schaunard piped up.
“To good company,” said a voice from the doorway, “and good music.”
“Musichetta!” Joly rushed to take her hand and lead her to the table. He raised his glass: “To love!”
Bossuet’s smile could have lit the room. “To many happy returns.”
*******
“Musichetta, my love! I thought you weren’t coming?”
“Well, I decided I was being a silly girl after all. A mere café should hold no terrors for a grown woman, don’t you agree? In any case, my reservations weren’t as important as wishing Grantaire a happy birthday.” She embraced Grantaire, leaving a pink afterimage of her lips on his cheek. “You look melancholy, my friend.”
“Nonsense!” Grantaire was ebullient. “I’ve never been better. A glass of ambrosia, my good Courfeyrac, for the goddess of the shrine! Schaunard, a hymn to do the lady justice.” Schaunard threw Musichetta a smile and seated himself at the keys.
“Musette!” Marcel had somehow got to his feet and was swaying towards her.
“Ah. Hello, Marcel.” Without missing a beat, Musichetta swung her right fist out and connected smartly with Marcel’s jaw. He fell sprawling. She shook her hand twice delicately, from the wrist. “Do you know, I’ve been waiting to do that for years?”
Rodolphe rushed over to kneel by the fallen painter. “What was that for? Wasn’t breaking his heart enough?”
“Not nearly. Now if you’ll excuse me.” Musichetta stepped over Marcel’s prone form to greet Jean Prouvaire and the others at the table.
”Don’t you turn your back on us!” Rodolphe shouted. “Don’t you dare walk away. We know what you are, Marcel and I.”
“Yes. I am the person who sold her earrings when someone we both loved was dying, and you never thought to go to your rich uncle.” She turned back to face them. “On that night, I knew I could have nothing more to do with you or your false Bohemia.”
Rodolphe was silent. Marcel raised his head, groggy. “I heard you got married. You married a… postmaster.”
“It fell through. I ended up with a postmaster’s son. And a medic.” Musichetta smiled. “And they all lived happily ever after, Fin. I’ll take that Champagne now, Courfeyrac.”
Marcel’s head sagged back to the floor. “Oh God. She’s wearing the shoes.”
*********
“Pardon me, citizen.” A deep voice at his elbow startled Joly. He turned to find that the speaker was a stranger of about his own age, wearing a battered, shapeless overcoat and an amiable expression. “Do you know what happened here, and if so, will you tell me? I don’t often find my friends on the floor of Café Momus, you see.” He looked down at Marcel and Rodolphe.
“Nor I mine. I can see how this might seem strange.” Joly wondered how, exactly, he was going to answer the newcomer’s question.
“Strangeness is a necessary first step to understanding.”
“There was… not a fight precisely, but an altercation… anyway, it seems to have blown over.”
“As the storm leaves fallen trees in its wake,” replied the man. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Colline, itinerant philosopher.”
“Joly, physician in training.”
“Ah, a disciple of Aesclapius! May Apollo smile upon your calling.”
The fellow was decidedly odd, Joly thought, but strangely likeable.
“Colline!” Grantaire called. “I was wondering when you’d turn up. Are you renewing Diogenes’s search? I fear you’re doomed to disappointment; the last honest man left the room some time ago. This party is strictly frauds and charlatans only.”
“I lack both Diogenes’s keen eye and his lantern,” replied Colline. “I doubt I would know an honest man if I met one. More to the point, I find myself lacking the key to my lodgings, which I was hoping to retrieve from my colleagues, if one may be found compos mentis.”
“Here’s one,” cried Schaunard, hastening from the piano. “I’m still on my feet, and moreover, I have keys. Not merely of ebony and ivory, but of the metallic variety which procures entry.”
“Both are honourable in their way,” said Colline agreeably, “but just now I stand in more need of the latter.”
“Come then: let’s get these wastrels home. Grantaire, hail and farewell. Rodolphe, Marcel, on your feet, you louts.” Schaunard and Colline wrestled Rodolphe upright; Marcel was more reluctant to leave the comfort of the floor.
“She’s wearing the shoes. Look, I can see ‘em.”
“Shut up about shoes,” Schaunard advised him.
At length the four bohemians threaded the labyrinth of tables and got to the door. As they disappeared through it, a series of impacts was audible, as of someone falling down a flight of stairs.
“I quite liked that Colline chap,” said Joly to Prouvaire.
“You have a weakness for good men in old coats,” replied the poet. “Bahorel and I are leaving too. The bill is settled— no arguments, my dears— and now we must pay the greater reckoning we owe to Bacchus and Morpheus.”
“And, possibly, Aphrodite,” added Bahorel in an undertone.
“Hush now.” Prouvaire laid a finger to Bahorel’s lips.
“Good lord,” whispered Bossuet, “I’ve never seen Bahorel purr before.”
Joly smiled. “Farewell, my friends.”
Courfeyrac, meanwhile, had embraced Grantaire and taken a courteous leave of Boissy and Floréal; he then bowed to Musichetta and kissed her hand.
“Courfeyrac, you are, as always, the preux chevalier,” said Musichetta. “Thank you, dear heart, for a glass of Champagne just when I needed one.”
“Widow Cliquot is the true heroine,” demurred Courfeyrac. “I am merely her champion. Joly, Bossuet: thank you for a fine evening.”
“Are you sure we can’t help with the bill?” whispered Joly urgently.
“Perfectly. Prouvaire and I agreed it between us. And I felt it was the least I could do.” Courfeyrac glanced at Grantaire. “Will he be all right?”
“He’s Grantaire,” said Bossuet. “He’s bounced back from worse. We’ll see him home.”
“No,” said Boissy, “we’ll do that. Floréal and I.”
They embraced Courfeyrac and waved as he left, then slowly made their way downstairs. The rain had ceased, and the air smelled of wet greenery and warm stone.
“You’re sure you’ll be all right?” asked Bossuet.
“Two such guards to protect my virtue, and you worry?” asked Grantaire. “These ladies are fearless, I’ll have you know. And in their company, so am I.”
“Well. Goodnight, then. And happy birthday, Grantaire.”
“Happy birthday,” echoed Joly and the others.
Grantaire growled. “You idiots.” Then, suddenly, he stepped forward and gripped Joly and Bossuet in a fervent embrace. “You beautiful idiots. I love you. Don’t forget it.”
“We never will.”
“Never.”
“Grantaire. I can’t breathe.”
He released them. “I’ll let you live. See, my mercy is infinite.”
“Long live Grantaire, the Bounteous and Merciful!”
“Long live Grantaire the drunk,” said Boissy. Floréal took his hand and said “Come on. It’s getting late.”
They waved farewell, and Joly, Bossuet and Musichetta started home, arm in arm. They walked in silence for a while, Musichetta’s heels clicking on the wet paving-stones, till they came within sight of their door.
“Thank you,” she said softly as they halted.
“For what?” Joly and Bossuet spoke at the same time, then giggled like children.
“For not asking.”
“Musichetta, love.” Joly paused, then: “Luisa. We always want to know you better— you’re the continent round which we sail— but we never want to know more than you want us to.” As he said it, his heart untwisted in his chest and the bitter taste of Marcel’s words subsided. All was well with the world. Musichetta embraced him— was it still raining? Her cheek was wet.
Bossuet spoke near his ear: “I am quite curious about the shoes, though.”
She laughed. Joly could feel the laugh in her ribcage, under his hands, and then the vibration of her voice:
“Help me take them off and maybe I’ll tell you.”
“As my lady commands!” Bossuet fumbled with the key, opened the door, and let the three of them in. Joly contemplated Musichetta’s shoes ascending the staircase, felt astoundingly happy, shut the door behind them, and followed.
Great Deeds He Has Done
art by nisiedrawsstuff
fic by etvlamaculotte
Summary: Locked into the upper room of the Corinthe, Enjolras is searching for something - and Grantaire is not helping.
(warning for alcohol use)
*****
Chowder was the one gawking from the stairway as Enjolras rummaged through the cold feathers of ashes in the fire grating – and so Chowder was the one he turned on, jabbing with one grey hand at the door.
"You – the key. I’ll have the door locked. No one’s to come in until I’ve said so."
Turning slightly to his left, he added, an afterthought:
"That’s very kind of you." Gawking was too energetic a word for what Grantaire was doing, but all the same he decided he would rather not miss the show. He tipped out another half a glass from his bottle, and slumped with a certain resolution back in his seat. "I find I’m quite comfortable, however." And he had, as was so often the case, been here first. He had no intention of vacating the premises on his own two feet. It would have been unorthodox.
Enjolras shrugged, Chowder scattered, and soon the two men were locked in the upper room. The sun hadn’t yet set, but the neighboring buildings looming in like crooked trees cast the room in a sleepy sort of murk, and blocked all but a sliver of the yellow evening sky from the dusty window. Enjolras made a strangely sinister figure in the light of the candle he was clutching. His shadow stretched and snapped across the walls as he stooped beneath a table, peered under a chair.
"What is it you’re looking for?"
Grantaire neither expected nor received an answer. He contented himself with watching, and guessing – surely there were only so many things that could take Enjolras to his knees, and they all had a similar character – and providing his usual form of encouragement.
"Ask and you shall receive, at any rate – seek and you shall find." He drank. Even with the rustle and clatter of Enjolras’ search, the room was far too still. He had come here anticipating more company, the usual morass of noise into which he could sink like a sodden rag. Absent that, however, he could make his own cacophony. Unaided, unadulterated, unmitigated. "Awful lesson, I always thought – ask and you shall receive. That Christ fellow was overbold. Not so great a sin when one’s the son of God, of course; men no doubt expect to be put upon by such as that. But parables have consequences, and an entire humanity has been raised up to think it’s godly to go knocking on their neighbors’ doors at all hours of the night begging bread. Or was it fish? Ask and it shall be given to you. The last time I went knocking at my neighbor’s at midnight, all he gave me was two good earfuls, and I was lucky to get that much. I was miserably confused. I thought his door was mine. I’m afraid it took quite a while to sort out. But there was no bread, no fish forthcoming – nor any snakes or scorpions, for that matter. No Christ in Paris after dark."
No reply. Enjolras was stalking the baseboards like a cat after a mouse, and Grantaire struggled with the disconcerting impression of ridiculousness. Stooped and a little flushed, under tables, over chairs, poring over every nook in the mantle as though it were an impenetrable text – even a man like Enjolras might look more than faintly absurd. There wasn’t much nobility to be gleaned, it seemed, from combing the floor of the Corinthe for – what? A note, he supposed. A communication from some confederate. No doubt coded and obscure, a list of names of any number of men leaping to get themselves shot, or an accounting of the guns they’d do it with, all done up in a proud schoolboy’s perfect execution of Augustus’ silly code. The sort of thing that might have been just as safely nailed to the wall, and better still never written in the first place.
"I’ve said a prayer to St. Anthony for you," Grantaire lied, and drained his glass. When he attempted to refill it, the bottle came up too light in his hand, and only a couple of mouthfuls tumbled out. He should perhaps have taken Enjolras up on his invitation to leave; he was ill-equipped for a long hunt. The prospect of a locked door standing between himself and either of the women who supplied him with drink was unsettling, unpleasant.
But given a choice between talking himself thirsty here and pickling elsewhere, he’d take the former. ”He’s never answered me before, of course. Probably he can tell I don’t much respect him. I don’t blame him, and I doubt you do – would you help me? But this time it’s for your sake – we can hope for an exception. Saints help one another. The fortunate always do. Intercessions beget intercessions beget –”
"I am not a saint."
Grantaire thought that a funny thing to say, coming from a man kneeling with his head bowed to the cracks between the floorboards. The candle Enjolras had set beside his knee was helping not at all.
"Not yet, anyway," Grantaire replied, lifting his empty bottle. "If you’d like a head start on the road to veneration, I could use some water into wine. I know those sorts of things are usually reserved for spectacles, big, ostentatious to-dos sure to make it into the papers, but I’ll be your vouching witness. Frankly, I think they’re better done in private. What is it they say? Don’t blow a trumpet before you. Rend your heart, not your garments. That sort of thing. Of course, that’s all best taken with a hefty rock of salt – how on earth do you take it seriously when it’s from the mouth of a man who cured a leper and told him not to say a word about it? Please. False modesty is even less attractive in gods than it is in women. Don’t blow a trumpet before you, He says, and then it’s loaves and fishes for five thousand. The nerve of it."
"Instruction is not the same as boastfulness." Enjolras shoved himself to his feet with an exasperated noise. There were light patches of soot and dust on the dark of his trousers. He spared Grantaire an irritated glance before crossing to where a shelf was propped against the wall, and wedging his foot behind it. "Miracles make points. They win men over. Like any great act, they mean more than they are – the substance is often secondary. Private virtue is one thing; private virtue is right, while a public announcement of the power of right is quite another. There’s no hypocrisy in spreading good news. It takes a truly hard heart to cast the feeding of the hungry as an act of self-congratulation. Help me move – no, never mind. Stay where you are."
Grantaire would have been on his feet in half a second, if not for that order – might have been even so, had it not come on the heels of an insult. He wouldn’t have called himself proud – who would, indeed – but his heart he felt should remain unquestioned.
"Or a hard head," Grantaire suggested, a shadow of wounded displeasure moving across his face. It dissipated in the space of a breath, however, passing by in no more than the time it took for Enjolras to grind the shelf across the uneven floor. Grantaire stubbornly refused to be touched. A soft heart absorbs arrows, after all. "Well. So perform for me this modest miracle – I’ll run right out into the street and tell everyone at once. Think of all the men who’ll come running then, will you? You’ve been trying to sell the wrong goods. Give the thirsty to drink. A claret, if it isn’t too much bother."
"You haven’t any water," Enjolras pointed out, running his hands along the back of the shelf.
"That, I can provide."
With a huff, Enjolras shoved the (sadly empty) furniture back against the wall, and rounded on him. ”The real miracle would be if you would get up and walk.”
Grantaire laughed. ”Later I’ll fall down and crawl. No thanks to you.” He rattled the empty bottle against the table.
The search continued, progressing to the window frames. Even the pale glaze the glass had half an hour ago had faded away – now it was simply dull with twilight. The room was beginning to feel closer, the city outside melting into one black mountain against the sky. A shiver worked its way down Grantaire’s back; a draft, perhaps. But the flame on the candle was steady. There was no wind. Nor was there any noise aside from the sound of Enjolras’ search, which began to seem thunderous to him, like winds in the distance or waves on the hull of a ship. It went on and on, longer than he would have believed possible in a room of that size.
"What is it you’re looking for?" he asked again, mostly to hear his own voice. "What could be so important? You need – what? Men? Weapons? Intelligence?"
"A mutual faith," Enjolras murmured absently, feeling under the leaf of a rickety table he’d already inspected.
"Surely the faithful don’t get so frenzied –"
Enjolras’ hand came down on the table with an unimpressive slap. ”Will you be quiet?”
Frenzied may have been the wrong word; but there was fear in him, Grantaire thought. Or it may have been no more than frustration, impatience. All enemies of faith, at any rate – all strange to see on that face, even for a man who made provoking impatience something of a specialty. If they hadn’t been so very different, he might have thought he simply saw his own fear reflected back to him – because he was afraid, if that was the feeling, like seasickness, like something peeling away inside of him like the red residue flaking into the empty pit of his glass. But – happily to say – he saw nothing of himself in Enjolras.
Enjolras turned away again. Grantaire’s mouth was dry; acidic. When Chowder’s voice came through the door, annoyed, sharp, griping to someone that no, he’s not finished yet, doing I-don’t-know-what, he jumped at the chance – again – to chase away the silence. Pounding his fist on the table, sending his glass and bottle bouncing toward the edge and sending a shudder through the floor, he shouted: “Knock, and it shall be opened!”
A slip of paper fluttered to the floor. From where, Grantaire could not have said; by the time he thought to look up, it had settled already by his chair. His first thought was to put his foot on it.
But Enjolras had already seen it, and picked it up as blithely as though he had expected to find it there all along. He unfolded it and spread it out across the table, smoothing away the creases; it was a jumble of letters, as expected, a wordless string of meaningless signs.
"Well, there you are," Grantaire breathed, his toes twitching belatedly inside his booth. "Your invitation to the ball, is it?"
Seizing a stub of pencil from a windowsill, Enjolras flipped the paper over and scrawled something equally unintelligible on the back. He rolled it up into a frayed little scroll, took Grantaire’s empty bottle by the neck, and dropped the note inside. When he raised his eyes to Grantaire, whatever desperation had been written on his face before had disappeared entirely – how nice, Grantaire thought, to be able to wash oneself so clean so quickly.
"As good a hiding place as any," Enjolras said pointedly – and then he turned and went to the door. As he was going out, Chowder was coming in, looking harried and busy with a short broom in her hand.
She glanced down at the bottle Enjolras was holding, and then at Grantaire’s table. ”You’ll be wanting another one.”
"No need," Grantaire said, lifting his glass and regarding it with a bitter sneer. It remained stubbornly empty. No wine forthcoming; nor bread, nor fish. "I am a worker of miracles."
In which Enjolras Completes and Corrects Combeferre, and realizes how much the other did the same for him.
fic by scienceandmoths
art by clenster
(warning for canon violence and major character death)
He had spent the next several minutes talking quietly with the newcomer, attempting to explain his friend’s habits and outline a few of his own points to show Marius why Napoleon was not as perfect as he seemed to think.
But when everyone had left Enjolras immediately went to Combeferre’s rooms, knocking on the door and clasping his hands in front of himself while he waited for his friend to answer.
“Combeferre,” Enjolras started as soon as the door opened, stepping past him and pulling off his coat once he was inside— “I need to speak with you about earlier.”
“Please, do come in Enjolras,” Combeferre replied dryly, shutting the door once Enjolras was inside and turning to face him. “What about it? The friend of Courfeyrac’s was certainly a character.”
“That’s exactly what I need to speak with you about,” Enjolras said, pacing softly for a moment before turning to look at Combeferre. “You handled the entire situation very poorly. This was his first ever meeting, and he was brave enough to be willing to speak out about his passions, which is one of the very reasons we hold them, is it not? And yes, I did not agree with him in the slightest. But the way you replied to his speech was very poor. You simply gave him those words and left, without even explaining your opinions or attempting to help him understand why you believe he is wrong. I stayed behind to speak with him, which is something that you should have done. I was… disappointed in the way you handled it. And I hope that you will consider my words and, should you have to in future, handle situations like that better.”
Combeferre sat at some point during Enjolras’ lecture, listening to it quietly as he spoke. The words made sense, and Combeferre nodded once he was finished speaking.
“You are right. I should not have been so short with him, and I should not have left. I’ll keep your words in mind.”
He stood up, putting a hand on Enjolras’ shoulder with a faint smile. “I’m sorry to have inconvenienced you. Sit, I’ll make some tea to make it up to you.”
Enjolras returned his smile before he sat, resting his chin in his hand as he watched Combeferre move around the room. There was no need for further words. Everything that needed to be said had been said, and they were content with the silence.
Combeferre was never content or satisfied with not knowing every detail of a topic. His interests were wide and often time consuming, and sometimes days would go by before Combeferre would emerge from his apartment after an experiment. And so it seemed that Combeferre’s current situation was just that, as Enjolras had not seen the other for roughly two days when he decided to make a visit to the other man’s rooms.
He knocked lightly, clasping his hands behind his back as he waited for Combeferre to answer. He heard a few thuds that sounded like something heavy being dropped onto a wood surface, presumably Combeferre’s table, before his friend approached the door and pulled it open. Combeferre immediately grinned widely at the sight of Enjolras, pulling the other inside by the arm before he shut the door once more.
“I’m attempting something; it may help us in the weeks to come.”
That was the only explanation Combeferre gave before he returned to the table, returning to his work as he leaned down to study it carefully before lifting a small container to show it to Enjolras with an almost pleased smile.
“Black powder. Far simpler to make than I thought it would have been, but I found out the parts that you need to make it. I haven’t tested to see if it works yet, but it looks accurate.”
“It’s a black powder,” Enjolras noted with a sarcastically raised eyebrow, arms crossed as he watched Combeferre. “Have you really been holed up in your rooms for two days working on this? I know you had classes, but you didn’t attend them. You’re going to be removed from the program if you continue that route. I thought that you were the responsible one.”
Combeferre shrugged in response, scooping a small pile out onto the middle of his table and placing a string in the center, running it out a few inches. “Shall we test it? See if my risking my attendance was all for naught?”
Enjolras watched the scene before him warily as Combeferre grabbed a candle, and he approached slowly to put a hand on his arm. “Are you sure it’s wise to test this here? Doesn’t black powder explode? That doesn’t seem the wisest thing to do in such a small space.”
Combeferre shook his head in response, “That’s barely enough powder for a spark. I just want to test if I can actually manage a reaction from it.”
With that, he lowered the candle to light the string that he’d placed in the powder, watching the flame slowly reach to the powder. He was leaning forward eagerly when the flame reached it, rearing back when the resulting “spark” was larger than he had originally anticipated. Enjolras’ arm immediately shot up to cover his face, coughing slightly as the room became smoky from the reaction before looking at the large charred spot in the center of Combeferre’s table.
“At least it didn’t light it on fire,” Enjolras sighed in relief, frowning when he felt how warm his arm was, twisting it to get a better look..
The resulting look of shock on Enjolras’ face at the sight of the large hole in his red jacket would normally have caused Combeferre to laugh, had he not been staring in bemusement at the table.
“I suppose it worked then…” he murmured, turning to look at Enjolras.
The blond stared for a moment before laughing, leaving Combeferre staring in confusion and unaware of his half signed eyebrows.
With how quickly their lives seemed to be moving, it wasn’t often that they got to simply enjoy the calm, and spend quiet moments together. But they managed to grab them, every once in a while— so when they were lying together, limbs tangled loosely together among the sheets, Combeferre took those moments to memorize every piece of the other, treasuring it.
He thought that Enjolras was asleep when he rose, padding softly across his rooms quietly to get a drink. Combeferre paused on his return, catching his reflection in the looking glass and taking a moment to study himself. With thoughts of Enjolras, and his perfection fresh in his mind he couldn’t help but look at himself more critically. He pinched the extra weight that had settled around his middle, brows furrowed as his gaze roamed over the imperfections that he could see. Imperfect eyesight, a too large nose, plain features, weight that wouldn’t disappear no matter his efforts.
Combeferre started when he felt arms wrapping lightly around his middle, relaxing when Enjolras pressed a soft kiss to his shoulder. “You are beautiful,” Enjolras murmured softly, splaying his hands across Combeferre’s stomach as he met the others gaze in the mirror, “If I had a way with words such as Jehan I would write you sonnets to describe just how you are. No matter the imperfections you may see in yourself, you are perfect to me.”
Combeferre smiled softly at the others words, reaching down to cover one of Enjolras’ hands with his own. “You don’t need to,” he murmured softly, “Those are plenty.”
Enjolras smiled, reassured for the moment. He took Combeferre’s hands in his own, pulling the other gently back to bed and holding him close.
The last few weeks of preparation went quickly, which Enjolras felt was bittersweet. It was the moment he had been working towards for his entire life, but it also meant that, should they fail, their time would be ending. He found that his time beyond preparing was limited, with both he and Combeferre absorbed in the work that was still left to completed.
But to see the barricades erected fully left Enjolras nearly speechless, as all his planning and preparation had finally come to fruition. And while they were in a peaceful moment, Enjolras knew it wouldn’t last— knew that the National Guard would return for them eventually.
And that all of this could be torn from him in a single instant.
So when most were settled down to catch rest when they could, Enjolras searched for Combeferre and gently pulled the other aside, hand clasping his as he pulled him to a quiet corner of the upstairs room. As soon as they were alone he wrapped his arms around Combeferre, closing his eyes when Combeferre’s hand cupped his cheek and pressing their foreheads together.
He didn’t speak, simply letting the quiet speak for itself and treasuring the moment— one that could possibly be their last. Enjolras didn’t want to waste it by fumbling with his words. Eventually, Combeferre felt the need to speak, taking a soft breath before he did so.
“Thank you,” he started softly, his voice a quiet murmur in the room, “I know that at times, I am not the easiest to deal with. But you have never once left, nor have you treated me harshly when even I have done so. You have always been there, and I am beyond grateful. I think that if there were such a thing as a soul mate in one’s life, that you would have been mine. You were sent to help me when I am not on proper course. And I would not have had it in another way.”
Enjolras listened quietly, a smile gracing his lips before he pressed a soft kiss to Combeferre’s forehead. “It has been my honor. And I intend to continue to do so, as long as I possibly can. Please, stay safe.”
And with one final clasp of their hands they parted, separating to continue to keep their fellows in check, and spread encouragement when needed.
The quiet peace that had settled over them was firmly shattered with the next day, as the battle resumed around them and their world began to fall apart. For how could one barricade expect to last against the entirety of the National Guard?
But there was no time to think on that as the chaos raged around them all, and Enjolras’ attention was entirely focused on the tasks at hand, fighting tooth and nail for himself and those around him. But it was a shot to the heart each time he watched a comrade fall, tears pricking unbidden at his eyes as he continued to fight.
But then it happened, and the one person he was hoping to survive most fell to the ground. A vicious cry was torn from Enjolras as he rushed forward, clearing the area surrounding Combeferre before he knelt next to him.
It took Combeferre a moment to register that his head was no longer resting on the ground, but on someone’s lap. It was Enjolras’, he realized, when his vision focused on the blond halo surrounding the bright blue of his familiar eyes.
“En..jolras,” Combeferre reached up for him, pain shooting up his chest as he did so, to cup the other man’s cheek gently. It was only for a moment, a light fluttering of his fingers over the skin before his hand fell, one last breath escaping in a rattle before he was still.
And Enjolras could do nothing more than stare for several moments at the motionless form in front of him. Because Combeferre couldn’t be dead, Combeferre was the solid one, the one who was always there.
Without him, Enjolras realized how small he felt.
And how lost he was without the one person who could complete him.
A Union of Hearts and Mind
fic by teddyferre
art by acesius
interior illustration by aworldbeyondthebarricade
Rating: T
TW: gun violence, blood
Notes: AU (“His Dark Materials” crossover, daemon-verse)
The pamphlets he had been holding in his hand scattering on the cobblestones, Combeferre surged forwards, pushing people out of the way in his haste to reach his friend. Oriana, who had kept close to his side all this time, snarled and bounded through the forest of legs surrounding her, making her way towards Kendra, who had spiraled down from the sky, hitting the ground somewhere amongst the crowd.
Enjolras was laying curled up on his side, bright red blood seeping out between his pale fingers and soaking through his shirt and waistcoat.
“Enjolras!”
Combeferre crouched down next to his stricken friend, carefully laying a hand on Enjolras’ uninjured shoulder. Enjolras rolled onto his back, his hand still pressed to the wound, hissing with pain.
Without a second’s thought, Combeferre ripped the sleeve from his shirt, rolling it up and handing it to Enjolras: “Press this to the wound.”
The moment Enjolras removed his hand from his shoulder, Combeferre first gasped, then let the air out with a small sigh of relief.
“Combeferre? How bad is it?”
He had not even noticed Courfeyrac crouching down besides him, but now he looked over to their friend, frowning slightly while shaking his head: “Not as bad as it could have been. It hit too high.” He closed his eyes, drawing a shaking breath: “It hit too high, thank God.”
Courfeyrac reached out and stroked a lock of hair from Enjolras’ face, which was pale and clammy with cold sweat. Then, he swallowed and set his jaw, looking back over his shoulder: “We have to get him away from here. If they see the pamphlets, I doubt they will care about him getting shot.” Courfeyrac snorted, his eyes lighting up with anger: “They might even applaud it.”
Combeferre nodded, never taking his gaze off Enjolras, who echoed both their sentiments with a weak nod, his jaw clenched and eyes glazed over with pain.
“Courfeyrac, where’s Bahorel?” Combeferre said, tearing off his second sleeve and handing the wad of fabric over to Enjolras, who exchanged it for the other. Combeferre frowned once more at the sight of the blood-soaked rag, but it seemed that the flow of blood was slowing down.
“Alexis and him took off after the gunman,” Courfeyrac said, getting up. Fists balling at his sides, he lowered his voice: “I hope she rips the flesh off his bones.”
Combeferre couldn’t fault his friend for the dark sentiment, seeing how angry he felt himself. Still, they needed to keep calm right now: “Courfeyrac, you should go see after Kendra. I could see her fall down. Ori’s with her.”
Courfeyrac nodded: “As is Freya.”
While Combeferre, Joly and Bossuet all helped Enjolras get back on his feet, Courfeyrac hurried over to where their daemons were gathered. Oriana was standing over the stricken kestrel, her tufted ears laid back and the fur on her back raised. The lynx was snarling at everyone who dared come nearer than a few steps, while Freya was standing with her long body half-curled around Kendra, both protecting and supporting her.
As soon as Courfeyrac was by their side, Oriana backed away a little, giving him room to examine the bird. Freya took the chance to run up Courfeyrac’s arm and perch on his shoulder, her watchful eyes never leaving Kendra.
Courfeyrac frowned as he looked down at the kestrel. Kendra was crouching, panting through an open beak, her left wing hanging limply from her body. Courfeyrac reached up to run his hand over his ferret-daemon’s back, trying to calm her.
“We need to go.”
Oriana nodded, then gingerly took Kendra into her mouth to carry her, careful to not hurt the kestrel with her sharp teeth. Kendra didn’t resist, though Courfeyrac wasn’t sure if that was a good sign or a bad one.
As quickly as possible, the small group made their retreat. Courfeyrac took the rear, with Freya occasionally standing up on his shoulder or hopping onto his head to keep a lookout for anyone following.
They reached Combeferre’s rooms without further incident. Enjolras had been quiet the whole time, uttering not even as much as a whimper, but one look at his ghostly pale face was enough to see that he was in severe pain.
As soon as they had laid Enjolras down on the bed, Combeferre turned to Courfeyrac: “We need to cut him out of his clothes. There should be a pair of scissors in that drawer over there.”
While Courfeyrac was rummaging for the scissors, Oriana silently slipped through between them and gingerly placed Kendra down near Enjolras’ head. Usually the picture of grace, the kestrel looked almost pathetic as she tried to get closer to him, her wing dragging uselessly behind her.
Enjolras turned his head, looking at his deamon through eyes clouded with pain: “Are you badly hurt?”
“Nothing that won’t heal on its own,” Kendra replied, “so don’t waste any strength worrying about me.”
“Kendra’s right. Leave the worrying to us,” Courfeyrac said, stepping up to the bed, scissors in hand. “I apologize for ruining your garments,” he went on as he cut first through Enjolras’ vest and then through the shirt underneath. “Then again, seeing how there’s a hole in them, they couldn’t be saved anyway.”
Enjolras gave Courfeyrac a weak smile: “I think I’ll survive this part of the procedure.”
“You, my friend, are a much stronger man than me,” Courfeyrac replied with a grin that looked a lot more cheerful than his voice sounded. “And you’re going to survive the rest of this ordeal, too.”
With that, Courfeyrac slowly pulled the fabric away, careful as to not tug too much at the edges of the wound. Then, he turned to Joly and Combeferre: “He’s all yours.”
Combeferre moved to Enjolras’ side, taking a long, careful look at the wound. Enjolras flinched every time his shoulder was touched anywhere near it, but still didn’t utter more than the occasional hiss of pain.
“We need to get the bullet out and wash the wound,” Combeferre finally said, turning to Joly. He bit his lip: “He’s fortunate that it didn’t penetrate too deeply.”
Joly nodded: “And quickly. Do you have your instruments at hand?”
“In the lower left shelf over there. There’s also a bottle of brandy” Combeferre turned back to Enjolras, pushing a few locks of hair out of the other man’s forehead: “You’re going to need it.” Then, he turned to the others: “I would ask everyone else to leave.”
“You heard him,” Oriana growled, herding the other two men and their daemons out of the room.
“Kendra…” Enjolras croaked, looking at Combeferre with an almost pleading gaze.
“I am staying,” the kestrel cut in, her tone harsh. “I will keep my composure, and if I should be unable to, Combeferre may remove me from the room. But until such is the case, I am staying.”
Enjolras smiled weakly: “I guess it is no use arguing with you?”
“No more than it would be if things were the other way around,” the daemon replied fondly.
–
Courfeyrac had spent his time worrying most of the nails on his right hand to the quick and, when the door finally opened, sprang up from the chair so quickly that Freya tumbled out of his lap and to the ground: “How is he?”
Combeferre threw the rag on which he had been haphazardly wiping his bloodied hands into a basket in the corner, then gave his friend a short, relieved smile: “We removed the bullet and debris from the wound.”
Through the door, Courfeyrac could see Oriana pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed, and he turned his gaze to Joly, then to Esmé. The rabbit was keeping close to Joly’s feet, shaking her body to remove the tension. In an instant, Bossuet’s daemon Nia was at her side, and Esmé crouched down to let the sparrow sit on her back.
“If his blood isn’t infected, he should heal in due course,” Joly said. “But he has a few critical days ahead of him. He will most likely develop a fever.”
“Then I will stay,” Courfeyrac said, looking at Combeferre.
Combeferre nodded, then turned to Joly and Bossuet: “You should go home and get some rest. I might have to call on you again, Joly, depending on how it goes.”
“If we hear anything from Bahorel, we will let you know,” Bossuet said, then placed a hand on Combeferre’s shoulder: “Take good care of him. And you, Courfeyrac, take good care of Combeferre. Make sure that he sleeps. I know these medical students, they always think they are impervious to such mundane things as sleep or hunger,” he added with a fond smile in Joly’s direction.
Joly just shook his head and bent down to pick Esmé up, cradling her in the crook of his arm: “You can call on me any time, day or night, my friend.”
After the two men had left, Courfeyrac let himself fall down onto the chair again and ran his hands through his hair, looking up at Combeferre: “Jesus Christ. It’s not as if I’d never thought about that something might happen to us. After all, our ideas are not exactly well-received in some circles. But it’s always been, well, us.” He drew a breath, casting a gaze towards the door to the bedroom, and his voice dropped a little: “Us, not him. He always seems so invulnerable. As if nothing that is of this world could touch him, let alone do him harm.”
Combeferre nodded silently, his eyes following Courfeyrac’s gaze. A little off to the side, Oriana and Freya were lying curled up around each other, with Ori occasionally running her tongue over the ferret’s back.
“I know,” Combeferre said, pinching the bridge of his nose as a wave of exhaustion rose inside of him. But he couldn’t rest. Not right now. He sighed: “In the end, Enjolras is flesh and blood, just like the rest of us. Which might be why his assailant shot him in the first place,” he mused. “Show him, and everyone else, that he’s flesh and blood…”
“Well I’ve seen enough of the blood part today to last me for the rest of my life,” Courfeyrac said, frowning, his brow furrowing in anger: “And if I ever lay my hands on that man, he will get a glimpse of his own mortality, you can be sure of that.”
Combeferre went over to put his hand on Courfeyrac’s shoulder, giving it a slight squeeze: “Don’t think I do not have the same impulse. But we’ve got to focus on Enjolras now. He needs all our strength and care to help him get better.”
Courfeyrac reached up to cover Combeferre’s hand with his own, giving him a smile: “Yes. And we won’t desert him.”
–
“He’s burning up.” Courfeyrac pushed a lock of damp hair out of Enjolras’ forehead and looked towards Combeferre, his eyes dark with worry. Enjolras’ skin was hot to the touch, even though his body was being wracked by shivers. “Is there nothing more we can do?”
Combeferre shook his head, his mouth a tight line. They were taking turns wrapping Enjolras’ legs with cold, damp strips of cloth, and Joly had come by with a syrup made of herbs and willow bark which they were giving Enjolras, but in the end all they could do was pray and let the fever run its course.
“At least the wound doesn’t seem infected,” Combeferre said, removing the dressing to put on a new one. The flesh around the hole the gunshot had left in Enjolras’ body was swollen, put there was no pus, no necrotic smell or the tell-tale lines of blood poisoning.
Courfeyrac lifted Enjolras’ hand to his lips, kissing it gently, then looked at Combeferre: “He’ll survive, right?”
“He’s strong,” Combeferre said. He would love to be able to reassure Courfeyrac, but he wouldn’t lie to him.
Courfeyrac drew a shaking breath, then focused his attention back on Enjolras. Freya, who seemed to have permanently attached herself to Courfreyrac’s shoulder, chittered soothingly and rubbed her head against Courfeyrac’s neck.
Combeferre finished dressing the wound and, for a moment, laid a hand over Enjolras’ rapidly beating heart, a gesture which seemed to calm the other man a little: “Kendra. Are you hungry?”
The kestrel hadn’t left her perch on the headboard since Joly and Combeferre had extracted the bullet, not even to hunt. She would have to eat something soon. Still, she ruffled her feathers and clicked her beak: “No.”
It was the first thing she had said in almost a day. Usually, she was the chattier of the pair, something that was a bit unusual for a daemon. But then, she was as unique a creature as Enjolras.
“Still, you should eat. Courfeyrac,” Combeferre said, turning to the other man, “do you think you could go to the butcher and get her some meat?” Not only did Kendra need to eat, Courfeyrac needed a spot of fresh air.
Courfeyrac nodded: “Of course.”
When Courfeyrac returned, he found Combeferre dozing in his chair, Oriana laying at his feet. The lynx’ eyes were half closed, and Courfeyrac couldn’t help but smile. For the first time since Enjolras had been shot, the pair looked almost peaceful, and he couldn’t really be angry at Combeferre for falling asleep on his watch, not after he had been awake for over a day now. Should something have changed for the worse, Courfeyrac was sure that Kendra would have woken his friend up promptly.
Looking at Enjolras, Courfeyrac gave a quiet sigh. Enjolras’ eyes were open, but glazed and shining with fever, and Courfeyrac was quite sure that his friend didn’t even know he was there.
“Stay here, Freya? I’m going to cut up Kendra’s supper.”
The ferret scurried down his arm and onto the bed, curling up into a ball next to Enjolras’ head.
It didn’t take Courfeyrac long to cut the meat into thin strips. Kendra ate them with relish, her haste betraying her former insistence that she wasn’t hungry. Once she was done, however, she settled back into her watchful position above Enjolras’ head, the only movement an occasional tilt of the head or click of the beak.
Freya slowly loped back to Courfeyrac and began licking his fingers: “Don’t worry. He’ll make it. It would take an army to bring those two down.”
“I hope you’re right.”
–
“We almost had him,” Bahorel said, the anger in his voice echoed in Alexis’ deep growl. “But we lost him in the crowd.”
“Him and his little rat,” Alexis added. She turned her head towards Bahorel: “I could have sniffed them out.”
“Yes, and what good would that have been?” Bahorel retorted with a sigh and picked up his wine to take a deep swig. They were sitting at a table in a corner at the Corinthe, the glum that everyone was feeling like an invisible barrier between them and the rest of the crowd that had gathered in the wine shop.
“Bahorel is right,” Esmé said, looking up from cleaning her face with her paws. “You can hardly maul a man in broad daylight.”
“He shot Enjolras!” Alexis barked back.
“Which would be a good defense if it weren’t for the fact that Enjolras, and you two for that matter, are known for harboring revolutionary sentiments. Which I guess wouldn’t help you with the authorities,” Joly said.
Bahorel reached out to stroke and knead the back of Alexis neck, and slowly, both him and the painted wild dog calmed down.
“And that, gentlemen, is the state of the law in our country,” Grantaire remarked almost flippantly. “Note that I said the law, not justice. I highly doubt that the Lady Justicia would agree with a murderer running free just because his would-be victim is an idealist whose utopian dreams don’t mesh with the general sentiment. Joly, how is he, then? Enjolras?”
At the last bit, Clio, who had been restlessly winding around Grantaire’s legs for as long as they had been sitting here, stilled in her movement.
Joly stroked his chin, then looked down at his hands: “The fever hasn’t broken yet.”
Silence descended over the table, only broken by a sorrowful mewl from Clio. Almost before Grantaire had even moved his chair back, the gray cat had jumped into his lap and pushed her head into the crook of his arm.
Draining his wine, Joly stood up from the table: “But speaking of, it’s time for me to go and check in with them. I shall inform you if anything changes.”
Esmé stretched her limbs and shook herself, then hopped off the table onto the floor. Before following Joly, she turned, lifting herself up on her hind legs and gazing up at the cat that was still crouching in Grantaire’s lap: “Don’t worry, Clio. He’ll be fine.” Loping off behind Joly, she added under her breath: “I hope.”
–
“Courfeyrac?”
“You’re awake!” Courfeyrac whooped, then called over his shoulder: “Combeferre, he’s awake!”
Enjolras’ smile was weak and a little confused, but Courfeyrac would be damned if it wasn’t the most wonderful thing he had ever seen in his life. Bending down, he pressed a kiss to Enjolras’ forehead, noticing that the fever had gone down a bit. Freya had hopped down from his shoulder and was doing an excited little dance on the foot of the bed.
“For how…” Enjolras paused and swallowed, trying to get his voice to rise into a bit more than a pathetic croak, “how long was I…?”
“Three days,” Kendra said softly, hopping down from her perch and landing directly next to Enjolras’ head.
“Hopefully, that’s behind us now,” Oriana said with a gentle rumble, padding in from the other room, Combeferre at her heels.
“I feel terrible,” Enjolras said, frowning and blinking up at the ceiling. Raising a shaking hand, he reached for his wounded shoulder and gave it a careful poke. The pain that shot through his arm and up his neck made him hiss and drop his arm immediately.
“How about you leave the prodding of wounds to those of us who know what they’re doing,” Combeferre said, shaking his head fondly. “I brought you some water. You need to drink as much as you can, now that you’re once again lucid. And before you get any ideas,” he added, pointing a finger at Enjolras, “even after the fever has receded, which is hasn’t, you’re going to need at least another week of rest before I let you get out of this bed, or do any task that is more strenuous than reading a book. And no arguing.”
“You listen to him,” Kendra said, momentarily interrupting her task of disentangling some of Enjolras’ locks from each other to nip gently at his ear. “Else, you shall find yourself with a hole in your ear as well as your shoulder,” she said, her voice carrying a hint of mischief as well as warning.
–
“Will you at least let me look over Courfeyrac’s pamphlet?”
If Combeferre hadn’t known better, he would have interpreted Enjolras’ expression as a pout. He shook his head fondly and chuckled: “No. You have to rest, and that includes your mind and your soul as well as your body. No working yourself up.”
“Combeferre, I am already worked up. If I do not engage in some kind of useful, productive activity soon, I shall go mad.”
“No.”
Enjolras huffed, but the finality with which the word had been uttered made it clear that Combeferre would not give in to any kind of argument.
“Just for a few more days,” Combeferre amended, “you will be back to your full strength much sooner for it.”
Enjolras nodded, then reached up to gently run a finger over Kendra’s head. The kestrel had just returned from outside, having gone back to hunting or simply hovering above the streets of the city. “I envy you. At least one of us gets to be free to come and go as they please.”
The daemon closed her eyes, tilting her head underneath the gentle touch: “Don’t worry. Trust in your friends’ judgment and soon, your spirit will once again soar alongside me.”
“That I do,” Enjolras replied, but his gaze sought out Combeferre and Courfeyrac, “always.”
Silent as the Grave.
fic by estelraca
art by ellevante
(warning for canon violence,blood,canon major character death)
“And now for the moment of truth.” Prouvaire keeps his voice solemn, the thrill of expectation thrumming through him as he pries loose the last nail holding the crate shut.
“After all this drama, who wants to bet we’ll get a heap of sand and a handful of fake coins or some such?” Bossuet is sprawled out on the ground next to the box, his eyelids half-shut as he watches Jehan pry loose the nails.
“Even if that’s true, it’ll still be interesting.” Joly raises one hand in surrender as Jehan turns his glare on the aspiring doctor. “Not that it is true, mind you. I’m sure there will be some fantastic occult goods in the crate.”
“Right. As I was saying.” Prouvaire grasps the edges of the crate lid and pries upward. It takes more force than he expected, even with the nails already pulled. Whoever prepared the crate for transport did an admirable job.
Eventually the top comes loose, though, and Jehan holds his breath as he peers down…
At a very fine collection of straw and unfamiliar dried plants, packed carefully into the crate, filling it to the brim.
“Or plants.” Bossuet sits up a bit straighter, peering down into the box. “We could end up with a collection of desiccated plants from Africa.”
Jehan throws a handful of the dried plants at Bossuet’s smirk. They make poor missiles, fluttering down around his friend’s head. Joly grabs two pieces of dry yellow grass and shoves one behind each of Bossuet’s ears.
Carefully pulling straw out of the box handful by handful, Jehan begins uncovering the actual contents. A lacquered box is revealed first, a beautiful piece of workmanship, the ankh displayed prominently on the lid. Jehan hands the box to Joly before continuing his digging. A handful of small statues, heavier than they appear at first glance, emerge next—some human, some animal, some human bodies topped by the head of a bird, a dog, a lion. These he passes out to whoever holds out a hand, listening with a contented smile as his friends exclaim over the artifacts and he continues digging.
A dagger emerges next, a stone blade with a lion-headed crouching human figure as the handle. Before Jehan has a chance to study it too closely Bahorel is reaching out to touch the blade.
Jehan hands it over without fuss. He’s only halfway through the box, and there will be plenty of time for them all to examine each piece.
An intricately carved scarab beetle with what appears to be a skull motif worked into the center disappears into Grantaire’s eager hands. An urn with glyphs in red and black, a cap in the shape of a jackal’s head, and an affixed tag in English that reads ‘heart’ is snatched by Joly. A ring with the same lion-headed cat-woman carved atop it as the dagger drops into Bossuet’s hand, and he tries it on his own finger, smiling as he elbows Joly and asks if Joly thinks Musichetta would appreciate it. A collection of texts—some scrolls falling apart, some beautifully painted pieces of art filled with glyphs that are incomprehensible—goes into a pile for Combeferre. Jehan wonders idly how long his friend will spend deciphering them—and if it will be as disappointing as Champollion’s deciphering of the Rosetta Stone.
Not that Jehan begrudges Champollion his success—certainly not to the extent that some of his fellow Romantics do. While he can understand where his fellows feel let down—the glyphs of Egypt were supposed to contain arcane knowledge, hidden and lost wisdom, channels to talk with gods and demons and creatures beyond all human comprehension—it isn’t Champollion’s fault that the Egyptians instead recorded family lines and royal history. Though Prouvaire is glad, for the moment, that all he can see are beautiful symbols full of infinite potential.
Yes, better to see them like this, art and magic and the unreadable tales of an unknown people, than to know that they are a genealogy and record of kings.
Always royalty, no matter where they go, the great killer of romantic notions of enlightenment and esoteric potential.
Shaking the thought free, Prouvaire reminds himself that not all writings of Egypt are about royalty. There are tales of gods and monsters, instructions on how to navigate the afterlife that have been found, and if those exist, what else might there be? Better to focus on that rather than delving into the melancholic disappointment that had been the uncovering of Egypt’s true message to future generations. The thrill of the unveiling rekindled, Jehan pulls the last piece from the box, cradling it to him for careful study. It is a box, a much smaller plain wooden box with a simple latch. Flicking the latch open, he reveals the last artifact.
The mummy is small, perhaps two hand-spans long, the linen that binds it woven tightly together in an intricate pattern of white-and-black that is striking. The head retains the shape of the original body—or so it seems, at least, pointed ears and the rounded feline face. Jehan runs his fingers gently over the cool, dry wrapping, tracing the eye sockets, the cheeks where whiskers once sprouted, the muzzle, rubbing it under the chin. Someone—the black is so deep that Jehan is uncertain if it was the original preserver of the mummy or one of the middle-men through which he purchased the crate—has drawn in features. They have given the tiny cat too-human a face, though, eyebrows rather than whiskers, the round human pupils rather than the slitted cat’s eyes, though they are faithful in the recreation of the muzzle and the feline’s perpetual smile. The combination of cat and human features sends a little shiver down his back as he studies them, raises the hairs on his arms.
“What a terrible creation.” Joly stares at the mummy in undisguised horror. “You’re not going to keep that, are you?”
“Joly, you keep pieces of dead bodies in our house. You’ve no right to question others’ tastes in interior decorating.” Bossuet reaches out to touch the lower half of the mummy, then draws his hand quickly away, rubbing his fingers together.
“Those bodies were used for medical study, and I always kept them in particular locations so they wouldn’t bother you or Musichetta.” A pout crosses Joly’s face, though horror rises again as he continues to study the cat. “And once I was done with them, I saw they were properly disposed of. I didn’t wrap them in sheets and draw a grin on them for eternity.”
“He’s a cat. They always smile, it’s how their faces are made. A bit of cruelty from their maker, and perhaps that’s why they enjoy toying with the rest of creation so much.” Jehan cradles the tiny, surprisingly light body closer to his chest. “And yes, I do think I intend to keep him. What else could we do? Bury him? Throw him in the catacombs?”
“He might be at home in catacombs, if he’s from one of those pyramid-tombs.” Bahorel also reaches out to touch the creature, looking less disturbed than Bossuet but still uneasy.
Joly looks between the crate and the cat, a new worry replacing the horror on his face. “You don’t suppose he’s from a cursed tomb, do you? There weren’t any curses on any of these artifacts, right, Jehan?”
“I don’t know.” Jehan allows a smile to creep across his face. “There’s no one fluent in the Egyptian glyphs left living—even Champollion is still learning. Perhaps all of us are now cursed to die terrible, horrible deaths, all the moisture drained from our bodies—”
Grantaire snorts. “I wish someone could drain the moisture, all the rain the last few days has left me feeling sodden no matter my clothes.”
Jehan ignores him. “—and there will be stories told of us, and perhaps one day, when someone least expects it, our impossibly mummified bodies will rise again—”
“But without moisture it seems the body would have a very difficult time getting muscles to work.” All evidence of discomfort fades from Joly’s face as he rubs at his nose, excitement rising in his tone as he considers the problem. “I mean, Galvani’s experiments worked best on muscle that was still in a relatively fresh state, not dehydrated—I shall have to discuss with Combeferre if there are possible connections between this and the weakness that is seen in patients who are lacking in water due to fever or blood loss, perhaps there is potential there for experimentation and improvement of current techniques…”
Jehan sighs, giving up on continuing the hypothetical since his audience is clearly not interested in it at the moment.
Grantaire strokes one finger gently along the cat’s head. “It’s softer than I expected. Feels… breakable. And if you’d like, I can draw a sketch of you as a horrible mummified monster from the bowels of the underworld.”
“If you wish.” Jehan returns his friend’s smile before looking down at the cat mummy again.
He does want to keep it, and it does seem fragile. He will have to find somewhere to put it.
Retreating for a moment from the crate and the items that his friends are once more perusing and commenting on, Jehan hastily clears a stack of poetry books, a skull with the cranium missing but the jawbone wired into place, and a vase filled with drooping flowers from his nightstand. He will have to find more flowers. The space cleared, he carefully arranges the mummy, standing it upright, its eyes facing the door of the bedroom, on alert for trouble.
“Is that what you were, little one?” Jehan once more gently strokes between the cat’s ears, finding a strange comfort in the gesture, though he is careful not to damage the linen. “Were you a child of Bastet, a guardian? Ah, but if you were a guardian, what became of your guardroom? Were you a servant of Ozymandias, and ‘round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretched far away’? Perhaps you could finally tell us the truth of the ‘powerful but unrecorded race, once dwelt in that annihilated place’. Though Egypt was not annihilated, and the records are there, they are just unreadable or disappointing now.”
The cat mummy simply stares at him with its inked-on eyes.
Perhaps it hasn’t liked his suggestions. “Or maybe you weren’t a guardian. Maybe you were a warrior, Sekhmet’s cub, not given a chance to grow in a cruel world? There are many like that now, unfortunately.”
Still the cat continues merely to stare at him.
“Ah, well.” Jehan grabs the wilting flowers, leaving everything else on the floor. He’ll find places for the rest later. “Whatever you were, little one, you will be treated well here, this I promise.”
Rejoining the rest of his friends, Prouvaire joins in the eager considerations of his comrades, delighting in the shivering sense of eyes following him from the nightstand.
***
A small platter of milk.
A human skull, the spirit long departed.
A handful of flowers, their fresh, clean scent mingling with her own dry scent of ancient age.
An image of her Lady Bastet.
A carven image of a fox-headed, fox-tailed god that she doesn’t know.
A chattering young man, the giver of the offerings, praying in words that only slowly become comprehensible, his spirit shining bright with hope and belief.
It has been a long time since any have called on her, a long time since she has had a purpose.
Stretching slowly, languidly, enjoying the movement of each muscle-that-is-no-longer, she ventures out to explore her new home.
***
Jehan dreams.
He knows it must be a dream, because cats can’t talk.
Though it could be a hallucination. He will allow for that, because he did a fair amount of drinking with his friends when they were done dividing their treasures, and he and Bahorel may have shared a bit of something stronger.
Dream, hallucination, he doesn’t care. Kneeling on the bed, he studies the creature before him. It looks almost exactly like the cats and kittens that he has fed and played with throughout his life. Its body is a dark buff color, with a black stripe down the center of its back and dark stripes providing markings on its face, sides, and tail. Stretching out one hand, he offers it for the cat to sniff.
The cat does so, face bent down, tail curled regally around its paws. It yawns, displaying tiny fangs, and then studies him with green, green eyes. You worship me?
“I might.” Jehan turns his head, his gaze sliding over the nightstand and its burdens. “I tend to keep an open mind. Though I didn’t think cats could talk.”
Old. The cat stretches, butt in the air, tail arched, front claws digging into the bedding. Very old. Talk for purpose.
“For purpose…” Jehan’s fingers itch to bury themselves in the cat’s fur. “What purpose?”
Guard. Guard for the Lady. The cat butts its head—her head, if the voice is anything to go by—against Jehan’s hand, and he scratches under her chin. But then dark. Nothing. Now…
“Now me.” Jehan scratches his way from the cat’s chin to her ears to her neck, working his way down her back as a purr begins to echo. “What can you guard?”
Tell me. Might guard. The cat turns in a tight circle before collapsing on its back, belly to the sky, green slitted eyes piercing through Jehan’s. Boring in dark. Bad.
What did one tell a tiny cat-guardian to guard? What did one tell a hallucination to protect? Certainly nothing too big, since the mummy had not been able to stop what happened to its former home. “Protect my friends. I have no problem giving you milk and keeping your shrine, and if I could ask for anything, that’s what I’d want. Protect my friends from harm if you can.”
Friends? The cat pulls his hand down and gently nibbles at his smallest finger.
“Friends.” Jehan smiles, thinking of his friends. “I’ll tell you about them, and you decide what you want to do.”
He talks of his friends. He talks of his country, his world, his place in it, what he wishes for the future, how frightened and excited he is that the fervor for revolution is growing once more as it becomes apparent to more that the 1830 changes will not be enough. He talks and the cat doesn’t mind, so long as his hand continues to stroke it.
He talks until he sleeps, an exhaustion of body and a lightness of soul, and his cat-hallucination sleeps with him, purring curled against his chest.
There are no bite marks on his hand when he wakes, no fur in his bed, but he offers a small amount of fresh milk in the tiny saucer he had placed in front of the cat mummy anyway, and smiles as he strokes it between the ears.
***
He keeps the shrine.
He prays, though his prayers are strange, his gods many and varied.
He sings, even when there is no music, his words lilting in beautiful rhythm.
He gives her milk, and scratches between her ears, and is warmth to curl against as cold such as she has never known descends on her new home.
He asks only that she guard his friends, and though she knows it is a hopeless task, she follows them anyway, learning more of each as time passes.
***
Grantaire is the first to mention the ghost to Jehan.
“I’m only telling you this because out of all of us you’re the least likely to call me crazy or say I was just drunk. Which I was, but only a little bit.” Grantaire edges closer to Jehan, his voice dropping in volume so that Jehan has to lean closer to hear. “And I have proof, you know. Though it’s proof I could have faked, so I know that Combeferre wouldn’t believe me, and Courfeyrac would say I was just having a lucid dream, and if I tell Joly and Bossuet it might end up in one of their plays…”
Jehan nods, agreeing with Grantaire’s assessment, expression eager as he waits for Grantaire’s rambling to spiral around to the actual story that he wants to hear.
“So… well… yes…” Grantaire rubs at the back of his neck, expression reddening as he takes a gulp from his wine glass. “So I was painting, as I said. It was late—perhaps one, two in the morning? Not the ideal time to be painting, but sometimes I’ll get interesting color combinations or shadow work, and any way I was just glad to have the urge to paint something. And… well I suppose I should admit this isn’t the first time I’ve thought there might be something a bit… odd around the house recently. It’s not every day, mind you, but sometimes I feel like I’m being watched, or like something has grabbed at the laces on my clothing and is pulling on them, or… very rarely… will find myself petting a very soft creature only to look down and, of course, have no creature there. I’ve been dismissing the events—foolery, drunkenness, wistfulness for the idleness and simplicity of childhood with pets who believed you controlled the world.”
Jehan can see Grantaire’s expression darkening, and as much delight as he occasionally has in delving into the depths of despair with the man, right now he wants to hear the rest of the story. “But last night was different?”
“Last night…” Grantaire lets out a half-chuckling sigh. “I was drawing the Amis—it’s for Courfeyrac, if it turns out right. And I was talking to myself, as I’m wont to do when it’s late. And after a bit I noticed that every time I asked a rhetorical question, I got an answer. Just quiet at first, a little bit of a prrr or sometimes a mra, but as time wore on the answers became louder, until I swear it sounded as though a cat were meowing at me in these very demanding tones that clearly indicated agreement or dissent!”
“Fascinating.” Jehan finds himself smiling, thinking of the tiny mummified cat on his nightstand. He hasn’t had dreams of speaking with her again, though he does dream sometimes of petting her, fur silky beneath his hand, whiskers firm and prickly. “Did you ask anything important? Did it tell you anything of value about the mysteries of existence?”
“And I know for certain that it wasn’t a cat outside or a stray that crawled inside the building, not unless it was lodged in the walls somehow because I checked… though mundane explanations seem not to interest you. Right.” Blinking, Grantaire stares up at Jehan with a puzzled expression. “I did mention it seemed to be a cat ghost, right? It didn’t say anything other than cat-noises.”
“Ah. Pity.” Jehan takes a drink from his own glass. “But it did something else, something that made you certain it was real?”
“Yes.” Staring down into his almost-empty glass, Grantaire shakes his head. “I was just starting to add color to clothing. I was working on your image, actually. And I was debating between blue and green when a very precise paw print appeared on your chest in bright blue paint. Just the one print, no others, nothing leading to or from. And after that… nothing. No cat noises. Strange, eh?”
“Fascinating.” Jehan smoothes his cyan waistcoat, a smile spreading slowly along his face. “Anything since then?”
“No.” Grantaire drains his glass in one smooth motion. “But I’ll tell you if there is, believe me. Maybe it’ll make a good topic for one of your poems—the cat who decided to stay and drive artists mad.”
“I think this particular cat may have already appeared in my work.” Jehan pulls out a small notebook where he keeps random lines and snippets of work, but before he can find the pages he wants Enjolras stalks into the room, a harsh set to his eyes that means there will be work to take up shortly. “I’ll show you later. Keep me apprised of any new developments as soon as they happen.”
“Of course.” Grantaire nods his assent, gathering his empty glass and fading to the back of the group, clearly recognizing from Enjolras’ expression that interruption will not be welcome in the near future.
Jehan doesn’t get a chance to talk with Grantaire about the ghost again until the following day, and when he does Grantaire shrugs off the whole experience as most likely a dream. Jehan doesn’t push the matter, certain that further evidence will come his way given time.
***
“Do you believe that animals have souls?”
The question comes from Feuilly, and it takes Jehan by surprise, jarring him up out of concentration on a particularly troublesome couplet attempt in his latest work. “Pardon?”
Feuilly blushes, a dark red undertone to his skin, but meets Jehan’s eyes evenly. “Do you believe that animals have souls?”
“I do.” Setting aside his pen, Jehan turns his full attention to his friend. “I most certainly do. Why should man be blessed with a soul when all other creatures are not? The dog, at least, is capable of more loyalty and devotion than many men. Who would we be to deny him a soul?”
“That’s… somewhat like I’ve always believed, though I know it’s heresy.” A faint smile tugs at the edges of Feuilly’s lips, and his eyes drop to where his fingers are clasped together in front of him. “Not that heresy means much to you, I know.”
“Not in the Church’s definition, no.” Jehan finds himself smiling in turn, thinking of the horror with which most men of the clergy would view his outlook. “But I do enjoy considerations of the spiritual.”
“I’ve noticed.” There is nothing hidden or half-hearted about Feuilly’s grin now, and he straightens a bit in his seat. “It’s why I decided to ask you first. Combeferre would approach it as an opportunity for experimentation. Joly and Bossuet would find it comical. Grantaire would talk in circles, as is his wont. Enjolras… is given to a different kind of spirituality.”
Jehan has to suppress a laugh at the loving, half-awed way with which Feuilly considers Enjolras’ spirituality. There is something pure and beautiful in the way Enjolras adores Feuilly and Feuilly adores Enjolras, a meeting of kindred minds and spirits graced with very different experiences by the world, and on second thought there is actually nothing entertaining about it. Perhaps he will have to find verse to put to the emotions he sees from both men. Not now, though. Now he is to be Feuilly’s gateway to gaining information, a vessel by which the highly intelligent man will find the resources he needs to answer his questions. “Could I ask what the ‘it’ in question is? I suspect something prompted this foray into the realms of the spirit.”
“You’ll think I’m being foolish.”
“You’ve seen me being foolish. It isn’t a terrible way to be.” Jehan’s fingers toy with his pen, dancing it from finger to finger. “Though I find it difficult to imagine you being foolish at all, I must say. At least, not without provocation from others in our group.”
Feuilly grins again, relaxing a bit more. “I was going to say that you’ve seen me being foolish, but I suppose that caveat covers it. All right, then. I’ll give you the whole silly tale. Over the last few weeks, there’s seemed to be a cat coming and going from my apartment. I didn’t mind—it never showed itself to me, but it never destroyed anything, never left any unwanted presents, and cats can be a good way to keep vermin at bay.”
“How did you know a cat was about, if you never saw it?”
“Something would brush against my legs in the night—not often, just a handful of times, but I’ve lived with cats before, so I know the feeling.” There is a pleasant story before that, Jehan can tell from the softening of Feuilly’s face, but he doesn’t press for it now. Later, when he’s allowed Feuilly to share this story. “There’s also been noises, on occasion—you know the questioning mrow cats will make? I’ve heard that a few times. I never could find where the creature was hiding or where it might be coming and going from, though I looked. After last night… well, I don’t think this cat needs a hole by which to come and go, and I doubt I’ll have to worry about it freezing as the winter worsens.”
Jehan makes an encouraging sound deep in his throat.
“I’ve had nightmares on occasion, ever since the fighting a year and a half ago.” Feuilly half-turns from Jehan as he makes the confession, though Jehan knows that almost all of them have had dreams of battle and death on occasion. It’s a part of the price they pay for their beliefs and the potential cost of bringing their principles to a live birth in the world. “They don’t happen often anymore, but when they do… anyway, I was dreaming. Things were just starting to… go poorly for us. I was shouting—for you, I think, though the dream itself is hazy now. I think I was actually shouting, too, because my throat hurt when I woke.”
Jehan is sitting straight in his chair, his fingers tight around the pen, already knowing the answer to the question he will ask. “What woke you, Feuilly?”
“The cat.” Feuilly again meets Jehan’s eyes evenly, a hint of awe in his voice, touching his expression. “It batted my cheek until I woke, stared into my eyes with its round green ones, gave one very self-satisfied mao, and vanished. I could feel it sitting on my chest when I woke, but as soon as I moved to touch it, to pet it, it was gone. Into thin air, as though it didn’t exist, though I saw it as clearly as I see you.”
A prickling sensation runs up and down Jehan’s arms, the hairs standing on end. “You searched the room?”
“Nothing. Not even any cat hair on the bed.” Feuilly spreads his hands open. “But I trust my eyes. I know what I saw.”
“I believe you.”
“And that’s why I wanted to ask you about animals and souls, because it seems to me that to have a ghost you would have to have a soul, yes?” Feuilly frowns. “The priest who used to preach at the orphanage told us that animals have no soul, that they simply return to the earth when they die, but that never seemed quite… right to me.”
“It never did to me, either. One of my favorite bits of the Bible as a child—For the wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them—would make very little sense if there are no animals in the Kingdom of God, no souls for Him to save from the depredations of sin and deterioration that make up the mortal world of the Church.” Jehan watches Feuilly give a slow nod of agreement before charging on. “Plus look at all the saints who have ministered to animals—would any decent God allow Francis to spend so much time teaching to birds and wolves only to tell him his beast friends have no place in Heaven, no soul that may be saved?”
“Given the Church’s response to many things, it could be argued whether their God is decent.” Feuilly mutters the comment more to himself than to Jehan. Religion has too often been a point of contention amongst revolutionaries, and Jehan knows Feuilly has been almost constantly re-evaluating his own beliefs over the last few years. “I agree, though, and find it comforting that there are passages to support our position. Thank you.”
“There are, of course, also non-Christian ways of considering animals and their souls.” A bit of a wicked smile slides onto Jehan’s mouth as he waits for Feuilly’s reaction.
Raising his eyes to the ceiling for a moment, Feuilly shakes his head. “Out with it, then.”
“Oh, but where to start. Well, let’s start with reincarnation. It’s a belief in India, in both the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Buddhists believe that every living being has lived multiple times, that there is a consciousness that shapes and is shaped by the world over each life as it attempts to reach a state of nirvana. So a cat could become a man or a man become a cat. The Hindus have a very similar belief, though they agree more with the Christians that there is a soul, a distinct unit of the individual, that moves life to life, the circumstances of that life dependent on the karma accumulated through previous lives. It’s certainly a fascinating concept…”
He and Feuilly spend the majority of that night in philosophical debate, Jehan providing most of the textual references and promising to bring Feuilly books on the morrow, Feuilly providing very sound arguments for and against various portions of the beliefs. (Truly, how had Jehan managed to miss the blame clearly directed at the individual inherent in the concept of karma controlling ones’ birth and position in society? And the parallels that could be drawn with the divine right of rule!)
They don’t speak of the ghost-cat again, but Jehan makes sure to leave an extra bit of milk at the cobbled-together shrine the mummy shares with Inari and images of Wodin’s crows, a gift in gratitude for the solace given a good friend.
***
“Are you a spirit?” Jehan runs his hands through the cat’s beautiful fur, relishing the softness and the warmth as the chill of winter presses in on his bedroom. “Are you a ghost or a god or something else entirely?”
I am me. The cat arches against his hands, urging him to scratch more strongly at the base of her tail. Me, only me.
If she is a god, she is a taciturn and surprisingly laconic god. If she is the ghost of a cat, as seems more likely, she is a surprisingly verbose cat. Or perhaps she is simply better than most cats at making herself understood, aeons that he can barely imaging living through having passed before her eyes.
He is dreaming again, lost in a world halfway between wake and sleep, as he always is when he can see his mysterious guest. She doesn’t come often—or at least doesn’t come often as more than a brush against his shins, a faint trill somewhere in the night—and he treasures all of her visits.
“What did your original people think you were?” Rubbing under her chin earns a rumbling purr that vibrates through his fingers and up to his wrist. “What did they think they were?”
Guardian. Rubbing her head against his finger, twisting around until she flops onto her side, she gazes up at him with slitted green eyes. I am me. Guardian. You are you. Alive.
All very true, at least as far as he knows. Also not very helpful, and he frowns as he continues to pet her.
Guardian. She presses forward, clambering up his chest, forcing him to either lie down so she can perch on him or suffer claws in his skin. Good?
“Very good.” Jehan continues to stroke her fur, smiling and closing his eyes as she butts up against his chin. “Thank you.”
Good priest. A tongue, warm and wet, laps gently at his chin. Good priest, good friends, good guardian. I like it.
“I do, too.” He can’t seem to open his eyes again, sleep calling him inexorably down, but that doesn’t stop him from stroking her. “Change is coming, and if we have our way it will be change for the better, but there are many beautiful things in my life right now. So beautiful…”
She doesn’t say anything more, and he drifts into unconsciousness with her purr still rumbling in his ears.
***
“But I swear, it’s the first time I’ve ever been saved by the family pet!” Courfeyrac’s cheerful voice, clearly mid-story, catches Jehan’s attention, and he wends his way between tables to the one that Courfeyrac, Joly, and Bossuet are currently occupying.
“I sense a tale in the making.” Jehan settles himself, books on the table in front of him, and smiles at his friends.
“Courfeyrac’s latest dalliance almost ended in a duel.” Bossuet brandishes one finger on each hand as though it were a sword. “He was nearly caught in flagrante delicto with a fellow aristocrat’s wife.”
“I do protest being placed in the same category as de Chardin!” Courfeyrac places a hand to his heart, turning wide, innocent eyes on Bossuet. “And it is not my fault if he is unable to provide the stimulation that his wife desires—stimulation I think he would find rather easier to come by if he would consider her a person instead of the matrimonial equivalent of a nice coat rack.”
“From other accounts you’ve given of her, it seems that she was the equivalent of a coat rack, sold to an older man to tie the family fortunes together and hopefully provide both families with more stability.” Joly spreads his hands apologetically. “Not saying it’s right to consider her as such, but when that’s how her own family treats her…”
Courfeyrac’s glare only intensifies. “It still makes him a bore and a lout, concerned with his own fortunes, unable to even consider his wife as a fellow human being.”
“And you come in as the star-crossed lover, saving her from her fate?” Jehan raises one eyebrow. “That is both alike and unlike you.”
“She is a friend, a gorgeous woman, and a fellow believer in our vision of the future—she could be quite useful in the future as a source of information and a way of disseminating our views amongst those most resistant to them. But you all are distracting me from my story!” Courfeyrac leans forward, eyes dancing. “Do you truly want to make me defend the merits of my choice in partners, or would you rather hear about excitement and adventure?”
Bossuet finishes his glass and waves for a refill. “I’m sure stepping on the cat’s tail in the dark was quite the adventure, worthy of an epic poem. Prouvaire, get started, the rest of us will fill in as the muse strikes us!”
“I think I’d prefer to hear what actually occurred.” When it seems that Courfeyrac might decide to pout rather than continue his story, Jehan pats his shoulder. “And we all know that there is more to your relationships than just a romp between sheets—you are a man of honor and compassion, respectful of those most likely to be ignored even by voices agitating for change.”
“Well, that’s a bit more praise than I deserve, and certainly more buttering than is needed to let the rest of the story slip out. I think there are many here who share our love and admiration for the fairer sex in a more than corporeal sense.”
“Musichetta is one of the most intelligent people I know.” A hint of chagrin enters Joly’s voice, and he bows his head. “If I implied otherwise, or insulted your lady friend, I apologize.”
“I know it was just a bit of sporting.” Courfeyrac shrugs off any last vestiges of annoyance with a bright smile. “But it truly was amazing. She and I were right there, as Bossuet so charmingly put it in flagrante delicto, when the most hideous screeching noise came from the staircase! I think de Chardin must have been expecting something… similar to what was occurring, because the man had been silent up until that point, but oh, when that cat began yowling did he scream! To be fair it sounded more like he was on the stair with an angry tiger than with our usual feline friends—I didn’t know that cats could make such loud sounds! While he was cursing in the hall, clearly collecting himself after his encounter with the beast, Renee shoved me and my clothes into a servant’s stair.”
“Naked?” Bossuet’s interjection is amused.
“Of course, all my clothes in hand, me in the pitch dark, trying to fumble my way forward without making a sound.” Courfeyrac shudders, his face the picture of misery. “I swear, that corridor was home to a thousand spiders! And the places that I acquired splinters… but I consoled myself with the idea that if I just kept creeping forward, I would find my way to a safe area from which to vacate the premises. And I did end up downstairs, at least… but downstairs still in the dark, at a crossways with three choices of direction and no idea which to choose. What do you suppose happened then?”
“You put your clothes on to avoid more splinters?”
“You waited for your lady love to send directions, somehow?”
“You were discovered, and the feline’s good deed gone to waste?”
“You gave up and spent the night in the dark, sleeping standing up?”
“You—”
“The little cat came to my rescue again!” Courfeyrac interrupts Joly and Bossuet’s back and forth. “I think it was more that I was in the beast’s way as it used the servant stairs to escape the bedroom and what must have been an unhappy owner, but it brushed by my ankles in the dark—ah, the self control it took not to scream at that! I decided that the cat likely knew a good way to escape, or at least had a better idea than I did, and when I followed it I was able to find my way out without notice. It was a bit strange, though.”
“What was?” Joly smiles as he asks the clearly desired question.
“Well, I know the cat wasn’t very far ahead of me—I could hear it making little sounds most of the way, mrrrs or a bit of purring. But when I finally emerged, I didn’t see the beast at all. Just gone. Vanished.”
Bossuet smiles. “It was dark where you emerged?”
“Oh, most definitely, though not so dark as in that infernal corridor.” Courfeyrac shrugs. “I know it was likely a dark-colored cat who just blended into the darkness, but it was curious at the time.”
“Most likely. Though the eye is capable of amazing feats, it can also be fooled by the oddest circumstances.” Joly leans forward. “Plus there is gathering evidence that the eye, though exactly the same in appearance, has microscopic apparatus that can be deficient in certain individuals. It seems there are others who share Dalton’s inability to differentiate between colors that are, to the rest of us, quite obvious.”
Bossuet grins. “So perhaps when certain people say they cannot see the reason in our arguments they are not being intentionally obtuse, they are merely microscopically flawed?”
Jehan joins in the banter that follows, though Courfeyrac’s story remains at the forefront of his thoughts.
When he gets home that night he places a small amount of meat in front of the shrine that houses his cat. The meat stays there, seemingly unchanged, for the next twenty-four hours, until he offers it to a half-starved dog.
He dreams that night that a cat is purring against his side, biting gently at his hand, and wishes that he could still see the cat when he wakes in the morning.
***
“Someone searched my rooms last night.”
Combeferre whispers the words quietly, his lips barely changing shape from the bright smile with which he had greeted Jehan, Bahorel and Feuilly as he settled at their table.
“Did they take anything?” Bahorel also continues to smile, though his hand tightens on his glass.
“Do we need to get you out of the city for a bit?” Feuilly’s smile has disappeared, his expression settling into one of grim determination.
“No.” Combeferre shakes his head, allowing his own smile to fall. “There was nothing terribly incriminating, thankfully—Courfeyrac has our latest manifestos, and Enjolras moved the ammunition to a safer location two days ago, and my own weapons were kept successfully hidden, I think.”
“But we all need to be aware.” Bahorel claps a hand to Combeferre’s shoulder. “I’ll look into avenues for disappearing, in case the need arises, but hopefully you’re right.”
“I’m sure I am. As I said, there was nothing incredibly incriminating to be found. If there was, I doubt I’d be speaking with you now. Honestly the part that bothers me most is that they weren’t gentle with some of my collections.” Combeferre’s hands clench into fists, a snarl pulling at the corner of his mouth for a moment before being carefully suppressed. “They broke a wing off my striped albatross.”
Bahorel blinks. “You have an albatross in your room? As in the giant sea bird? Please tell me you mounted it with the wings extended, going across the length of the ceiling.”
“No.” A hint of amusement pushes some of the darkness from Combeferre’s eyes. “I mean, if I were to acquire an avian albatross I would most likely pose it with wings outstretched if possible—their wings are one of the more fascinating aspects of them, biologically. But this albatross was of the butterfly variety. It was part of my India collection, and it’s going to be quite annoying to acquire another. They also tore apart several of my articulated skeletons. Did they believe I was hiding incriminating documents in the finger bones?”
“We could.” Joly scratches idly at his nose. “If we were to hollow out the long bones of that human skeleton of yours, there would be room to hide things in it.”
“No.” Combeferre narrows his eyes. “We are not damaging my collection. And even if the long bones would be a decent hiding place, what did they think I was going to hide within the dog skeleton? Or the rat? They completely disarticulated the rat by throwing it against a wall, and though I’ve searched I haven’t been able to find all the little bones. I doubt I ever will.”
“Barbarians.” Jehan places his hand over Combeferre’s. “I suppose it should come as no surprise that those who don’t honor the struggles of the living would have no respect for the dead, but truly, what harm did they think it could do?”
“They might have just been surprised. Not that I’m condoning the destruction of your skeleton, I’m sure it was a lovely skeleton.” Feuilly gives a small sigh as Combeferre’s glare fades away. “But I know that if I were searching someone’s rooms and unexpectedly picked up the skeleton of a dead rat—which I suppose it must be dead if it’s a skeleton… anyway, I would find it rather… disconcerting. And probably not assume it was something that was meant to be there.”
Bahorel’s laugh rings out. “Oh, I can imagine that! ‘Let’s see, we have clothes, books, so many books, dear heaven this man is going to drown in books and paper, it’s going to be a flood, and are there supposed to be live insects in that box, I think I won’t check it, and that skeleton in the corner is watching me, the human one not the dog one or maybe they both are and what’s this flat smooth—God preserve me!’ I imagine it was quite the sight to see.”
The left side of Combeferre’s mouth twitches upward slightly. “I suppose, when imagined that way, it could have been entertaining to see. I would be more entertained if I could find all the pieces and try to put it back together again.”
“Then let’s go find them.” Jehan stands, pulling on Combeferre’s arm. “You’re all willing to help, yes?”
Combeferre stumbles to his feet, following the tension Jehan puts on his hand, but his tone is uncertain. “It may not be the safest thing for all of you to do—if they’re searching my rooms someone is suspicious—”
“And if they’re suspicious of you, they’ll already be suspicious of us.” Bahorel links his arm with Combeferre’s free one. “Especially me. I am an extremely suspicious man, after all. Besides, what harm is there in reassembling skeletons? Seems very scholarly and normal, not at all dangerous or degenerate.”
Feuilly shakes his head, though he follows behind them eagerly enough. “You students have a very odd sense of normalcy.”
They spend the next four hours helping Combeferre right his room, gathering papers and books into stacks, finding the small rodent bones and placing them in a neat pile on his desk. Combeferre instructs them, his voice rising sharply on occasion when he takes umbrage at how Bahorel is posing the human skeleton or at Jehan arranging some of the butterfly display cases inside the dog skeleton. Feuilly, perhaps wiser than them, manages to avoid being the target of these outbursts, instead helping arrange the tiny bones properly for Combeferre to glue.
When finally everything has been reordered to Combeferre’s specifications, the night has grown late, all the light provided by lanterns that Combeferre has set up. He studies the tiny skeleton before him, shadows thrown by the bones striping his hands in darkness and light, and sighs. “Not too bad, I suppose. Now she’s only missing two ribs, the tail vertebrae, and the mandible. Ah, I suppose I’ll just have to create another if I want a complete set again.”
Feuilly straightens abruptly, his face paling, and points toward the bed.
Jehan doesn’t turn fast enough to see the cat. He knows it is a cat, though—knows it is his cat, though that is madness—because he recognizes the self-satisfied mrr-prr.
“A cat.” Feuilly is the first to approach the bed. “I swear there was a cat—a cat just like I’ve seen in dreams—but where…”
Bahorel takes Jehan’s hand in his, his skin warm against Jehan’s trembling grip.
“Likely just a stray, gone into the shadows somewhere.” Combeferre stands, setting the skeleton down very carefully as he does. “I doubt it’ll hurt anyone—it hasn’t done anything so far, and with how small…”
Combeferre trails off as Feuilly turns back to him, face still pale, palm held out. Settled in Feuilly’s palm are three tiny bones and a set of vertebra on a hair-thin wire—the missing pieces of the skeleton.
Jehan can feel himself grinning, a mixture of pride—his cat, his ghost-visitor, his dream has done this—and fear—for it never bode well, interacting with the dead, having one foot in both worlds, it never ended with the living pulling back the dead but always with the dead claiming the living—vying within him. “A spectral vision clear, thrills every hair with fear.”
“The dead were wrathful found, ‘gainst those that slew.” Bahorel skips the majority of the verse, though he keeps the words in their proper cadence as he whispers them. “Though cats tend to be the slayer of rodents, I suppose.”
“Again, it could very easily just be a cat, they are swift and clever creatures who are good at disappearing at night…” Combeferre carefully takes the bones from Feuilly. “Or perhaps it’s not. I think, my friends, that we’ve all done enough work today. If you don’t mind giving me a moment to place these in their proper location so they won’t be lost, I’d like to treat you to dinner.”
They spend the evening discussing ghosts and ghost stories, trading beliefs and conjectures. Jehan finds, to his surprise and delight, that none of his friends are against the idea of ghosts existing—though Combeferre has an annoying penchant for wishing to prove their existence and the rules by which they work, completely destroying the mystique and majesty of the spiritual.
“We don’t need to prove anything about ghosts.” Jehan changes the water in the little saucer for a dash of milk as soon as he arrives home. He rearranges the flowers, not removing any of them but shifting where the wilting ones are. He will have to find a way to forge flowers from paper or something else that won’t die, if he wants to continue to have them at the shrine. “We just have to let you exist, and accept what you are. To thank you when you do kind things, and fight you if you do bad things. Just like you do with people and things of the physical world. There is a difference between mortal and spirit, yes, but if we can see it’s wrong, any being worthy of respect should also know it’s wrong. Not that you’ve done anything wrong. You’ve been amazing, and I thank you. And I should probably go to sleep, before I fall asleep right here on my feet. Thank you, little one, and rest well.”
He strokes her gently between the ears, above her painted, beautiful eyes, and stumbles his way to bed, a thousand questions and answers and questions for the answers sliding in colored verse through his mind.
***
He is one of the best priests she has ever had.
He doesn’t pray appropriately, but he prays avidly, daily, and he leaves offerings with such zeal and regularity that she almost remembers times long past.
Almost, but not quite, because she doesn’t want to remember.
She wants to be here. She wants to be with him. She wants to watch his friends, strange creatures that they are, and purr against him in the night, and learn what it is that he is trying so determinedly to do.
All priests have purpose, after all, and his is all-consuming, that she recognizes, even if she can’t understand it.
***
“Just stop by, if you can. Help a bit, or just… anything.” Bossuet’s voice trails off, and there is a dark dejection in his eyes, a dimming of the light there that cuts through Jehan. Bossuet, who has faced trial after trial with a smile, is frightened by something.
“Joly isn’t—”
“Not sick, God be thanked, though he was worried about it for the first week or two—every little tremor he had, every ache and pain from sleepless nights, he thought he had caught it and was going to give it to Musichetta and I.” Bossuet runs both hands through his hair. “But it’s… this epidemic is taking a toll on him. On Combeferre, too, I’m sure on everyone trying to work miracles while Death stalks the streets, but… I don’t know what else to do for Joly, other than bring him distractions and helping hands.”
Jehan nods, understanding dawning. Placing a hand on Bossuet’s shoulder, he squeezes gently. “I’ll be glad to stop by and do what I can.”
It is a promise easy in the giving, hard in the keeping.
The sick pile into the hospital in droves, their symptoms varied, their prognosis always grave. The cold that still lingers from winter does no one any favors, and the smells of vomit and feces and death permeate the hospital despite the best efforts of all those involved. For long minutes Jehan finds himself merely standing as out of the way as he can, watching the chaos and madness, bits of verse too morbid to write flitting through his head.
“Help or go.” Joly’s words are short, but his eyes are kind, still, despite a dark haunting shadow that clings to him as it clings to all working in the hospital. “I appreciate you coming and bringing food, but I don’t want you standing idle inhaling the horrible miasma here unless you need to.”
Pulling himself together, straightening, Jehan makes the only choice he can. “I will help. Just tell me what to do.”
He cleans beds, he moves people, he brings water and distributes as evenly as he can the broth that is supposed to help keep their patients wet and perhaps push back the tendrils of cholera wrapped in their essence. He recites verse as he works, taking requests when the men and women and children he assists are coherent and literate enough to give them, choosing those most hopeful for the future when the ones he works with aren’t able to make requests.
It is exhausting work. It is disheartening work, and he finds himself appalled once again at how quickly it becomes a matter of course to call one of the medically trained to confirm death.
There must be some better way to do this.
There must be some way to prevent this.
There must be something, anything—
“Come with me.” Joly’s hand on his shoulder draws him away, back from the madness and out onto a street that seems somehow too calm and too cool and too dark to belong to the same world as the hospital. “Come, Jehan, let me take you home.”
Jehan nods, feeling the motion too jerky and mechanical, and places his own arm around Joly’s shoulders, holding his friend tight, providing and getting support in equal measures.
Jehan doesn’t ask why Joly follows him home, why Joly follows him up the stairs, why Joly stands silent in the center of Jehan’s living room, staring in seeming confusion at the chairs. Instead he pours them both a glass of wine.
“Thank you.” Joly takes the proffered glass, staring down at it without seeming to actually see it.
“Was that… about usual?”
Joly’s head rises slowly, and he blinks a few times before giving a tired nod. “Since this started, yes. I hate epidemics. Not that this is news, I’m certain, but we always feel so… helpless. Like there are never enough hands, and even when there are like the work we do is never quite enough. And today wasn’t even the worst. Today…”
Jehan nudges Joly’s glass with his own, coaxing the man’s head up again. “Today?”
“Today… you’ll think me mad.” Joly meets Jehan’s eyes, a half-smile on his face, but over the next few seconds the smile fades. “Or… given that it’s you…”
Judging that silence is the best way to coax whatever Joly wishes to say from him, Jehan stays still and quiet.
“I lost two children today. We did. The hospital did. The old and the young are usually the quickest to die, the hardest to save. The worst to watch, too. I don’t know which is worse… when the parents are there, pleading with words and eyes and hands for you to do more, to work miracles, or when the children are alone. Frightened. Confused. Abandoned.” Joly takes a deep drink, grimacing as he does, either at the taste or at the memories Jehan can’t tell. “These two were like that, alone, but they became friends despite their sickness. Strange, how some can do that… continue to reach out, right until the end.”
“I’m sorry, Joly.” Fetching the bottle, Jehan refills both of their glasses. “I can only imagine—”
“They asked me for string and a bit of fabric this morning… right after you came. I couldn’t imagine what for. Then they said that there was a cat that they wanted to play with. A little striped cat, they said, crawling around them, purring, looking for something to play with. It must have been a fever dream, some kind of shared delirium, but it made them smile.” Joly drains his glass again, a slight tremble to his hand. “I gave them the toy, and they played with their invisible cat, pointing right at an empty patch of air, and they smiled. They laughed. They were happy. And somehow that makes it better, that they were happy, even though they were dead four hours later.”
Joly goes completely still, his eyes filling slowly with tears. “They died, but they smiled, and God, Jehan, what does it say about me that this makes it better?”
Jehan is prepared for the tears. He is already crying himself, tears trailing silently down his face as he watches his friend grapple with the horrors he has dedicated himself to fighting. He allows Joly’s wine glass to fall to the floor, not caring that it breaks, spilling red wine like the too-thin blood of a sacrifice across the hardwood. Wrapping his arms around his sobbing friend, he simply pulls him away from the broken bits of glass, making sure neither of them will be hurt, and holds him tight.
“It makes you human, Joly.” He whispers through his own sobs. “It makes you something beautiful, someone who has seen wonder and love shining even in the darkest time. Would it be better if all you did was cry? Would it be better if all you did was see the darkness, the loss, the hopelessness, and allowed that to consume you, slowly, one day at a time?”
His words only seem to make Joly cry harder, the man’s knees going out from under him, and Jehan allows them to sink slowly to the floor.
What else can he say? What else can he do?
Nothing. There are no words of comfort that Bossuet and Musichetta won’t have spoken, no platitudes about the good that he has done that Joly won’t have heard from others in his own profession.
What Jehan can do, right now, is hold his friend, and give him a place to cry, and cry his own tears onto Joly’s shoulders, because the world that is so beautiful can also be so, so cruel and awful.
After a time both their tears are spent, and Joly straightens. “I’m sorry, Jehan. I didn’t mean—”
“To trust me?” Jehan raises one eyebrow. “To be honest with me?”
“Well, no.” Joly blushes. “I didn’t mean that, of course. I just…”
“You needed to cry.” Jehan brushes Joly’s hair back into a semblance of order. “You needed to let go of all that you’ve seen over the last few weeks. I needed to cry, as well, and I only saw it for a day.”
“Yes, but you’re also… you. You’re not afraid to cry or laugh or whatever else you feel like doing.” Joly scrubs at his face with one hand. “You’re not a doctor. You didn’t join the profession knowing that this is what you would be facing.”
“Even doctors are human, my friend. And just because you have to be calm in front of your patients doesn’t mean you need to be calm in front of your friends.”
“I know.” Joly sighs deeply. “Bossuet, Musichetta, they both keep insisting on that, but I don’t want to be a burden on them. A burden on the rest of you.”
“This is not a burden. This is a privilege.” Jehan stands, holding out a hand to help Joly to his feet. “And even if you insist on considering it a burden to us, think of this: the more shoulders to carry a weight, the less placed on each. The less you have to carry alone.”
“If you’re certain it isn’t a burden.” Taking the proffered hand, Joly allows himself to be pulled to his feet. “And you don’t think… I’m not terrible…”
“It is not terrible to take comfort in the joy that others feel.” Pulling Joly into another embrace, Jehan speaks firmly. “You call it a fever dream; perhaps it was something else. The cat gave comfort to those children. Perhaps it was also meant to give comfort to you—what horrors does Death hold if He comes with a cat chasing string at his side?”
“Many. Death can hold many, many horrors.” Joly sighs, closing his eyes. “But you’re right. Thank you, for everything today.”
“No need for thanks.” Jehan squeezes Joly’s hand. “Just promise me you will come to me again if you ever need me.”
“I promise.” Joly smiles. “Come out with me for dinner? We can pick up Bossuet, Musichetta, maybe Bahorel or Grantaire and have a good evening still, if you’d like.”
“I would like that very much.”
The evening passes too swiftly, Joly calling it a night earlier than he normally would have, but it is a pleasant evening in good company.
When they part for the evening, Bossuet takes him aside, whispering quietly in his ear, “Thank you. I don’t know what you did, but thank you.”
“I didn’t do anything much. Nothing you haven’t done, I’m sure. Sometimes it just takes a different face and voice on the same message to help it get through.” Jehan gives a small smile. “And perhaps a small cat frolicking between worlds.”
Bossuet gives him a puzzled frown before shaking his head. “I should know better by now than to expect simple answers from you.”
“I can give straightforward answers to simple questions. If you ask a complicated question, though, expect a complicated answer.”
Bossuet grins. “And what about a simple question? If I ask you to get rid of the rat that’s been giving Musichetta so much trouble lately, will I get a maddening response?”
“Depends.” Jehan returns the grin. “Do ghost cats hunt living rats?”
He gets his answer two weeks later, when Joly comes into the Musain wincing, saying he had a very long night after Musichetta found a dead rat on her pillow.
Apparently ghost cats, just like living cats, liked to leave their presents in an obvious locale. Jehan makes certain to mention that he doesn’t need any rodent gifts when he makes his offerings that evening, though he suspects telling a cat what you want is unlikely to get the desired effect.
Still, it never hurts to ask.
***
“Stand still.”
“Sorry.” Bahorel finally stops fidgeting, his muscles locking down tightly as he offers Jehan a half-sheepish smile. “Still coming down off the fight.”
“Clearly.” Jehan’s tone is acid, though his hands are steady where they go about their work, wrapping bandages around the shallow wounds covering Bahorel’s forearms. “I still don’t understand how you managed to get into a brawl you weren’t prepared to win. You’re usually better prepared than this.”
“Accident. I wasn’t expecting a brawl, just a good night’s worth of drinking, but tensions are starting to run a little high.” Bahorel flexes both hands, testing the tightness of the bandage and wincing a bit. “How was I to know that calling the snot-nosed brat a Royalist would lead into a tavern-wide fight?”
“And I suppose you just called him a Royalist?” Jehan finds himself fighting a bit of a smile as he checks the bandages, confident that they’ll do their job for the night. “There were no other, more colorful terms flung about?”
“Oh, you’re the one to go to if colorful terms are needed!” Bahorel’s grin is wide and bright, undeterred by the injuries he sustained. “But I may have done my level best to explain to him why his views were wrong.”
“Of course. You were just trying to help expand his horizons, yes?” Taking a step back, Jehan gestures for Bahorel to have a seat while he fetches glasses and a bottle of wine.
“I’m glad that you understand.” Bahorel waits for Jehan to finish pouring the glasses and then raises his in a toast. “To the education of the populace, by discourse or duel, whichever proves more pragmatic at the time.”
“Next time try to be armed when approaching a duel.”
“It is not my fault that he had a sword-cane! A properly disguised one, too.” Bahorel scratches idly at the top of his right bandage.
“I’m certain you did everything in your power to prevent the altercation.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far.” Bahorel’s grin fades a bit, to a more gentle smile. “I am sorry for interrupting your evening. None of the scratches seemed terribly bad, though, and unlike Combeferre or Joly, I suspected you would still be awake and willing to assist.”
“It’s no trouble. I was doing a bit of writing, but it wasn’t going well, anyway.” Staring down at the dark red liquid in his glass, liquid turned black by the dim light thrown by the candles carefully situated around the room, Jehan thinks back on what Bahorel had said. “You think things will be coming to a head soon?”
“I do.” Bahorel nods, the smile disappearing completely. “Tensions are rising, both sides digging their feet in and refusing to budge. For some, there is precious little room left to budge. Between the winter and the cholera epidemics, quite a few are getting desperate. In others, the desire for freedom is being fanned higher with every decree that seeks to stamp it out, to silence our speech. Something will happen, soon.”
“You’ll tell Enjolras what you heard tonight?”
“Of course.” Bahorel tips his glass in a small salute. “But he knows. We all know. It’s just waiting for the right spark, choosing the right moment to help fan the flames into a conflagration. We don’t want any half-victory like we had before. Winning the battle only to lose the war leaves a very bitter taste in the mouth.”
“But if we win the battle, at least we can continue the war.” Jehan tilts his own glass.
“True. It will be exciting, either way.” Bahorel sits in silence for a few moments.
Jehan dips his finger into his glass, rubbing the liquid along the rim of the cup, watching the way it beads and rolls off his finger. Even those rare times when liquor approaches the color of blood, it never manages the consistency, the thick stickiness that is unforgettable, that can only be touched upon in words. How soon will he see blood again, true blood, bright red of flesh wounds, dark cherry-wood red of clots too thick to mean anything good? How many of them—
“There was something odd about this fight.” Bahorel’s voice, contemplative, pulls Jehan from his reverie.
“Oh?” Jehan puts honest curiosity into the exclamation.
“The way it started. I was having my… discourse with the Royalist, and I knew that things were heating up. When the boy grabbed his cane, I assumed he was going to strike at me. Imagine my surprise when he pulls out a blade—I think he surprised himself just as much, though. The look on his face when he saw me staring at the blade but not backing down—ah, I think he expected me to run screaming at the mere sight, and the thought that he might actually have to do something with the weapon was quite distressing for him.” A chuckle, low and warm, rolls out of Bahorel’s mouth before the mirth fades from his face again. “There were others less inclined to worry about the escalation of the fight, though. I didn’t see the man draw a blade—just a small thing, a dagger, but it would have done damage enough if he got it into me from behind. What do you imagine happened?”
A delightful prickling runs up Jehan’s arms as he leans forward to match Bahorel’s stance, knowing that anything he guesses won’t be correct. “Someone got to him first?”
“Not someone, something.” Bahorel raises his left hand, laying four fingers across his face. “The first I knew of him was when he started screaming, and I turned to find him standing with both hands pressed to his face, the dagger quite useless, blood oozing out around his fingers. He stood like that for only a moment, and then he lowered his hands and I could see the gouges down his face. Some beast must have gone at him—a cat from the size of the claw marks, though the depth was more akin to something a tad more impressive. The man’s lucky he didn’t lose the eye, though I doubt he’ll see out of it in the morning given the swelling he’ll develop.”
“A cat?” Jehan’s eyes dart toward the door to his bedroom. “Did anyone see it?”
“No.” Bahorel’s eyes follow his gaze. “That’s the oddest part. When I talked with those who aided me after we’d all been kicked out of the tavern, they all swore that no beast had been there. One moment the man was preparing to knife me in the back, the next he had a beautiful set of claw marks down his face. It’s not the first I’ve heard of cats, particularly invisible cats, helping the Amis, either.”
Jehan hesitates only a moment before standing. “Come.”
Bahorel follows, silent, eyes bright and expectant.
“This is her shrine.” Jehan gestures toward his nightstand, where the cat mummy and the saucer sit packed in with other religious relics. “Well, the little trappings of various religions that have caught my eye, but since she came I’ve begun to think of it as her shrine. I think… she’s doing what I asked.”
Bahorel kneels in front of the shrine, his eyes on a level with the painted cat’s eyes. His voice is low and reverent when he speaks, as Jehan knew it would be. “And what was it that you asked?”
“Protect my friends.” Jehan kneels by Bahorel, his hands falling into a clasped position in his lap, the sign of prayer that he was taught as a child. “I… don’t think she can do much. I sometimes wonder if it even is her, because we’ll go days, weeks sometimes without any sign, and heaven knows between our companions and us we tend to see trouble on a more regular basis. But I think she does what she can, and I show my gratitude for that.”
“Does she have a name?” Bahorel doesn’t move his eyes from the cat.
“Not that she’s told me. And she says she isn’t a god or anything like that. Just a cat. A very old, very smart, very lonely cat.” Reaching up, he strokes at her head, at the spot that he’s worn smooth. He’s been trying, lately, to avoid touching her, worried that something in his skin is damaging her, but sometimes he finds it impossible to resist. “If it was you who saved him, little one, then I thank you.”
“Not so much as I thank you. I’m rather attached to this body and life, no matter what others will try to tell you my actions say.” Bahorel inclines his head, his eyes closing. “If you did save me, if you’ve done things for the others, then thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”
Jehan closes his own eyes, reveling the scent of candles and incense currently threading through his room, the warmth of Bahorel’s body at his side… the brush of a furred head against his hands, whiskers thicker, prickling at his skin.
Bahorel’s hand falls on his shoulder a moment later. “Since we’re both still awake, what do you say to a bit more fun with the evening?”
“Fun like you just had?” Jehan raises his eyebrows, gaze going pointedly to first one wrapped arm and then the other.
“I was thinking more fun like crafting some rhymes to distribute for our cause, drinking with friends and perhaps sharing a bit of hashish, but I’m sure I can find a brawl if you want one.”
“No to the brawl, yes to the adventure.” Scrambling to his feet, Jehan pulls his waistcoat into better alignment. “Give me a moment to get dressed, and I’ll join you.”
They don’t find a brawl, but they do find good company, and Jehan returns to his rooms as the light of dawn is just touching the sky. He is greeted by a haughty meow, and stumbles his way through his morning ritual at the shrine, replacing the milk with water, rearranging the flowers to release their scent better, wiping dust and stray leaves away.
When he collapses into bed, he sees a flash of brown and gray, feels the scape of a sandpaper tongue against his cheek, and smiles.
Strange priest. The cat’s voice is exasperated. Half-mad priest. Two-world priest.
“Oh yes. I like that last one.” Jehan strokes his fingers through fur that is and then isn’t and then is there. “Two-world priest. One foot in this world, one in the other. What counts as the other? What counts as this? Is your world the other? Is the future the other? Is this world the world we see or the broader world, the one that includes you and yours? So many worlds, to narrow down…”
He trails into sleep with purring in his ears and a smile on his face.
***
Careful.
She does not beg, but her voice is rough, hoarse.
Careful, priest. Her head rubs against his chin, her whiskers prickling, her purr rumbling deep in his own chest. Even strong I only do so much, and not strong now. Please. Careful.
“I am as careful as I can be.” He rubs his fingers gently down her belly. “There is nothing to be gained by silence, though. I would gladly lay down my life for my cause.”
Yes. Sorrow coats the word. I know, priest. So go careful.
He can only promise her so much, knows that it will not be enough, so instead he turns to stroking her, burying his hands in her fur, enjoying the time that they have together.
***
“It will be very soon. A matter of weeks if not days.” Enjolras is mildly disheveled, his clothing dirty, his blond hair flying about his head. “We’re going to have to be very careful how we move, and make sure our weapons’ caches are easily accessible.”
“But not so easily accessible that our enemies will get to them first.” Courfeyrac slides a glass in front of Enjolras. “Because I think any of us would be very distraught to be in prison when the revolution comes.”
“If that’s where we are, we will fight for the cause from there as well. But yes.” Enjolras relaxes, a faint smile touching his face. “I think any of us would be missed when the barricades go up.”
“Especially you.” Combeferre scowls at their leader. “You are very lucky to be here tonight. Now is not a good time for us to be leaderless.”
“I know. And I didn’t exactly intend to be caught handing armaments over to allies.” Enjolras takes a small sip from the glass. “Though if I had been caught—or killed—I would expect you all to continue on with our plans undaunted. I know that you would. But I was not caught, thanks to a very patriotic band of felines.”
“Felines?” Jehan perks up.
“Cats avoided a catastrophe?” Bossuet dodges the smack on the shoulder that Feuilly sends his way. “Well this is a story that we must hear.”
“So I had successfully handed over the parcel when a group of gendarmes appeared. It was clear someone had tipped them off—something we will have to look into. My contact and I both ran—and no, he has nothing incriminating on me.” Enjolras studies his glass. “There were many alleys and side-streets, and I was doing my best to lose those following me but not having much by way of luck. I was getting rather desperate, considering trying to find a way into the sewers or the catacombs—don’t make that look, Joly, there were very few options left.”
Joly doesn’t back down. “We can save you from prison more easily than we can from cholera.”
“Well, you won’t have to save me from either. Just as I turned a corner, this unholy wail came up from the cross-street—the way I hadn’t gone, though it sounded for all the world as though I had gone that way and trod on a cat’s tail.”
“Caterwauling?” Joly offers the word with a far too innocent expression on his face.
“I was half-deafened by it—I imagine those chasing me were, too. And once one cat began screaming, others too up the challenge.” Enjolras pushes his glass aside. “All the streets echoing with the forlorn cries of wounded beasts. A fitting prelude to what is coming, yes?”
“The catabolism of the old world to create the new ushered in on the ululations of cats.” Grantaire’s speech isn’t touched by a slur, his eyes dark as he studies Enjolras, the English words sliding off his tongue easily. “Appropriate. Far more appropriate than you being captured, at least.”
“I am fine.” Enjolras’ eyes scan the close-packed table, meeting each of theirs in turn. “And it is time for us to get back to work, because the next few days will be busy. Ready?”
They all set to with grim determination.
The next morning Jehan trades the flowers at the shrine for an assortment of reds, knowing what is to come.
***
Jehan is going to die.
He is falling, stumbling down the wrong side of the barricade with a guardsman’s arms tangled around his feet, and he knows that this will be the end.
Except something stops his fall. In wild ecstasy he latches onto the arm that grabs his shoulder, kicking frantically until his legs are free and he can stumble back to his proper place on the barricade.
Bahorel shoots over his shoulder, and Jehan takes a few seconds to catch his breath before taking up his own weapons and returning to the fray.
He fights on Bahorel’s right side, providing extra protection for the man’s injured arm. Bahorel took a bayonet in the shoulder during the first fierce round of fighting, and blood still oozes sluggishly from the wound when he moves too quickly.
It could have been worse, though. It could have been so much worse. Jehan had seen how it should have been worse, seen the soldier pressing in to take advantage of Bahorel’s wound, the thrust that would have punctured lungs or heart or both.
He had also seen the man fall back, hands pressed to his face, blood spurting from a mass of lacerations given by invisible claws. If the man survives the fighting, he will be scarred for the rest of his life, with no knowledge of how he came by the injuries.
Jehan knows, though. He knows that his tiny, ancient friend has given him what gift she can this day, saving one of the Amis from what would have certainly been a killing stroke. And Bahorel, in turn, has saved Jehan, and perhaps together they will help make this revolution the success they have been dreaming.
Perhaps.
He will hope, and he will envision it, and he will stand with Enjolras and help ensure those who stand with them continue to see it despite all the horror that they will wade through to reach it.
But if they fail, if he dies, at least she will have granted him this, a few more minutes or hours or days fighting at his friends’ sides, and the dignity of dying with them instead of being executed by the enemy.
It is a great gift either way, and he thanks her, out loud as the crick-crack of guns and the clang of blades drown speech, in his heart as he wonders if he should have left instructions on how to care for the shrine should he die.
By the time the battle is over he decides that he should not have. If he lives, he will see to it himself; if he dies… if he dies, another caretaker will find her, some day, and hopefully give her the respect and friendship she deserves.
***
He died.
He died as all her priests have died—better than most, true, fighting for his ideal, but he died all the same.
She warned him. She told him she could make only small changes, small tweaks to the world.
He thanked her for them, even as he died.
It is dark in his room. Even when the sun rises it is dark, no one to draw open the curtains, no one to dust the shrine, no one to remove the drowned insects from the little saucer that is his small offering bowl.
How long? How long will it be dark and lonely again? How long until another priest comes?
She does not want to wait. She wants to yowl her grief and frustration, but she has no focus, no priest through which to channel the energy that is given her—no one to give her energy, drop by drop—and so her grief is silent.
“Not silent.”
She knows his voice. Spinning around, she dashes to where he stands in front of the window, prancing on her hind feet as she stretches up to place her front paws on his thighs.
“Ah, little one, I am glad to see you too.” He scoops her up, his hands as gentle as they have always been, and though she didn’t give him leave to she is so happy to see him that she only gently chomps on his arm. “We’ve both a choice to make now, though. Do you want to stay here, as you were bound… or do you wish to come with me and my friends, to whatever waits?”
She should not go. She has been forbidden from leaving. She is a guardian, and it is a guardian’s duty to stay and protect.
But she is tired, and lonely when she has no priest, and his hands are kind as they scratch between her ears.
“I can’t promise it will be better than this.” His words are a soft whisper in her ear as he rubs his chin against hers. “But all of us will be there, all those you’ve protected, and if you want to come…”
“I will come.” Licking once at his forehead, tasting the emptiness where there should be salty sweat, she knows that he should not stay here. He is meant to change worlds, not hang helpless between them. “Or, rather, I will go, and you will follow me.”
“As you wish, my lady.” He gives her a courtly bow, following as she trots out of his house and into the gray-darkness that leads away.
She pauses when she hears the others begin to gather, looking back over her shoulder to watch them. Bahorel throws himself on Jehan, demanding answers as to where Jehan had gone and how he had managed to travel so easily. Feuilly makes a soft, pleased sound as he catches sight of her, and she thrashes her tail for him, saucy and certain, the guardian of his dreams. Combeferre and Joly debate where the soul may be stored in the body; Courfeyrac tells Bossuet that this will be a fine adventure, throwing his arm around the other man. Grantaire tells Enjolras that he is sorry it took him so long to see; Enjolras very quietly tells him that he is happy to have had the time they did, clasping the other man’s hand tightly.
All of them ready, she stretches, gives an imperious mrow, and leads the way forward, into a future that none of them can predict but all of them are certain will be beautiful.
