[warning for death, illness, and any sort of potentially upsetting things related to poverty.]

2921 words.

—-

Feuilly owns exactly one piece of jewelry - a plain silver locket, empty, worn and dirtied by time. As far as he knows, the locket is the only thing he has left of his parents; Father Thibault, at the orphanage, told him so, and so Feuilly kept it with him through the years, through everything, and brought it with him to Paris. It was once beautiful, perhaps, in another era completely. Perhaps it was clutched in the hand of a mother, passed to the pocket of her son’s uniform when he marched off to fight a war. Perhaps it was lost, then, trampled in the mud, its former beauty spoiled by the blood of the innocents that was spilled on it. Then it would have been found, cleaned, and sold in the city market. And - and that is the part that grabs at Feuilly’s heart, sometimes, when he look at the tarnished silver locket - perhaps his father had walked by, and had stopped when he eyes caught its shine - and bought it to give to the woman who would have become Feuilly’s mother.

Feuilly doesn’t think of himself as an especially sentimental person; he cannot afford to be. Still, he does take pride in his imagination. He keeps the locket in a box in his room, by his bookshelf.

He hasn’t dared it touch it since the visions began.

—-

i.

She is beautiful; lively, kind, young - and she loves him.

Him!

She is all he can think about when he wakes in the morning - or at night, really, for is it day or night if the sun has not risen yet but he must leave the relative warmth of his bed to start a hard day of work?

But the though of her small hand in his eases the bleakness of his life and he waits, patiently, until the moment he will see her loveliness again.

—-

It starts innocently enough - at first Feuilly thinks he must have fallen asleep and entered a dream because all of a sudden he isn’t in his room anymore; he is in a house, a warm, happy home, light flooding through the windows, dust moths floating in the hair, illuminated by the warm glow of the setting sun - wasn’t it morning just a few moments ago? - and Feuilly is unable to move or speak for a moment as feels an intense, pure wave of joy - joy fulfilment love - wash over him - that is gone as suddenly as it came, and when Feuilly blinks again he is back in his own small, dark room.

The porcelain mug he had been holding is lying, shattered, at his feet.

The vision stays with him for a long time. He spends the rest of the week with a painful headache lingering behind his temples, but also has work to distract him, though the warm weather and bright June sun mean the days are longer, more exhausting. He had never minded before, but the lack of windows in his rooms now makes him feel vaguely melancholic, as if he is missing something.

He shrugs the feeling off and goes back to work; after all, that is the only thing he can do.

—-

ii.

He is not good enough for her; that, he has told her plenty, but she laughs every time, pretty and bell-like, and reminds him that she, too, is wearing garments made from cheap fabrics, and her fingers are as callused as his from her sewing and needle work.

He takes her hand, then, and kisses every scar on her knuckles, every crease on her palm, and she promises to marry him, whether or not he has a ring for her.

—-

It happens again four days later.

Feuilly is on his way to the Musain, where a few of his friends have convened, when an older gentleman suffering from a heavy limp drops a snuffbox a few steps in front of him. Feuilly reaches to grab it, intending on returning it to its owner -

- but he is immediately hit by a wave of nausea, the smell of blood and rot filling his nostrils. He can’t see much - except smoke, smoke and dirt and boots trampling the yellow grass. There is a sharp pain in his left leg; someone yells in his ear and he stumbles, suddenly back in the street of Paris.

He leans against a wall, panting, and he looks up; a few passer-bys throw him odd glances - probably thinking he is a drunk, or otherwise. The gentleman is nowhere in sight, the snuffbox still in his painfully tight grip.

Feuilly drops it as if it is burning a hole in his hand.

He has to sit against the wall fighting the urge to be sick for nearly ten minutes before his legs stop shaking - the left one doesn’t stop, not completely. He is still pale when he reaches the Musain and he leaves early, fully intending his own dreams to drown the distant sound of gun shots.

—-

iii.

The wedding is held in the summer - it is barely a ceremony, attended by very few friends; he does not have any family left, and she only has her elderly father, more than half-blind, dozing on a chair besides her. She looks splendid, as he expected her to, in the new dress she has made since he met her - a brown dress, with delicate flowers on the sleeves and skirt. She has worked on it for weeks, she explains shyly when he compliments her, and the exhaustion of these sleepless nights was worth the joy of this day. At her neck shines the bright silver locket his mother had received on her own wedding day, decades ago; the only present he can afford to give her.

If he thinks at all about the future as he kisses her, it is only of the house they will buy in the countryside in which they will raise their children once he has saved enough from his work at the factory to afford moving out of the city. She is nineteen; he, not yet twenty-four. They love each other; they still have time.

—-

Feuilly had not expected Prouvaire to follow him out of the café.

“Feuilly?” the younger man calls. “Are you alright?”

Feuilly curses under his breath and turns; his head is still spinning.

“Hello,” he replies, trying to sound nonchalant.

Prouvaire approches and even in the semi darkness Feuilly can see the concern on his expressive features.

“You look pale, my friend,” Prouvaire holds out his hand; Feully doesn’t move.

“I’m alright, there’s no need to worry. I just need some rest - I promise.”

“I saw you earlier today,” Prouvaire confesses, looking down at his feet. “On the street. I wanted to reach out to you, but there were too many - I did not want you to be embarrassed. For a moment I thought you had -” he shakes his head and blushes, as if he is about to say something he knows he should not. “But it is not like you, I know, to drink so much in the middle of the day. I am worried. You look unwell - I cannot convince you to see a doctor other than our friends, but perhaps we can at least go see Combeferre?”

Oh.

“I am not - embarrassed, exactly,” Feuilly says, looking away from the obvious concern in Prouvaire’s eyes. “And I was not drinking, no. I’m only tired I - I don’t know what came over me. There is no need to distract Combeferre from his studies. I only wish to sleep, now.”

He has not had any disturbing dreams when he is asleep, not yet - and as long as he does not understand what is happening to him, it seems to be the safest option.

Prouvaire’s piercing gaze, however, does not let go of him. It’s heavy yet gentle, warm and protective, and Feuilly flinches at the reality of Prouvaire’s hand on his arm, expecting to suddenly be taken somewhere else, to lose his grip on the familiar location of the backstreet behind the Musain, of his friend’s presence - none of that happen, but he feels his stubbornness dissolve. He explains, quietly, the headaches, the visions - or dreams, whatever they are - , the fear and the pain, and lets the younger student walk him to the main street.

—-

iv.

She is pregnant less than a year later; her belly swells as the winter winds blow down the streets and through the cheap walls of their rented lodgings. Her father dies in February; she falls ill and nearly loses the child in March, and her husband spends over a month of wages to bring a doctor to her. She and the child are both saved, but she is warned not to attempt to work until the child is born. That might not be until May or June, and her husband has to sacrifice his meagre savings to keep the three of them fed and warm through the following months. We will make it though this, he whispers to her at night, his voice already rough from the smoke he spends eighteen hours a day breathing in. He rubs her stomach, thinking of their unborn child - their family. Together, we will make it. I promise.

—-

“This is fascinating,” Combeferre says, stroking his chin, barely-contained excitement in his voice. He is eager to understand - Feuilly cannot blame him, though he isn’t so sure about the qualifying word he has used - although Combeferre seems to think everything is fascinating, but Feuilly has never thought that he, of all people, could be described as such.

He squirms on his seat, uncomfortable. Prouvaire is sitting on Combeferre’s couch, his long fingers tangled in the comforter, but his eyes are trained on them like a bird’s.

And Feuilly feels a little like a mouse, trapped and vulnerable.

“I thought - you don’t think I’m going mad?” he asks Combeferre, willing his voice to be more relaxed than he truly feels.

Combeferre shakes his head and pushes his spectacles up his nose with his middle finger; it’s an habitual gesture, familiar and beloved, and somehow Feuilly feels a little more at ease.

“There are people who dream of the future,” Combeferre says, a thoughtful look on his face. “Others can communicate without speaking, or possess a memory ten times as powerful as anyone else,” Prouvaire shifts on the couch and looks out the window. “Although you would be the first one I encounter, it is not surprising that some would dream of the past.”

“These are not exactly dreams, though,” Feuilly runs a hand through his hair. “It is like - I can tell I am awake. I am simply not - where I was anymore.”

Or who I was, he leaves unsaid.

Combeferre frowns, and a wrinkle creases slightly between his thick brows.

“Do you know what triggered it?”

Feuilly stays silent for a moment, digging through his memory for anything at all about the last twenty four hours that might be a clue.

“The snuff box,” Prouvaire supplies. “You had grabbed a snuff box that had fallen from a gentleman’s pocket. With the intention of returning it, I am sure,” he adds, smiling at Feuilly’s embarrassed blush. “But that is when you seemed to…” he waves a hand in front of his eyes. “You seemed to freeze, then you stumbled and fell against the wall. You dropped the box and immediately seemed to wake.”

“It lasted only a few seconds, then,” Feuilly nodded, mostly to himself, but Combeferre’s dark eyes turn to him, his frown deepening.

“Are you hurt?” he asks, voice no longer curious and interested, but concerned and sharp. “You have been rubbing your left leg since Prouvaire brought up the snuffbox.”

Feuilly’s face pales and his fingers unconsciously clench at the fabric of his trousers.

“I - am not hurt, I don’t think,” he hesitates.

“The old man who dropped the snuffbox was favouring his leg - the left,” Prouvaire adds quietly. “In fact, I am not certain he did not wear an artificial limb.”

Combeferre’s eyes widen behind his spectacles.

“I am alright!” Feuilly quickly reassures him. “I did feel pain, however, terrible pain - but it was gone as quickly as it had started.

"All of this from simply grabbing the snuffbox?”

Feuilly and Prouvaire both nod.

“This is indeed fascinating,” Combeferre repeats, then flushes slightly. “Of course, I mean I am sorry that you had to endure this, but - it truly is the first time I have heard of such an interesting… ability…”

Feuilly is not sure he would call it an ability under any circumstances; it has happened twice in less than a week and it was certainly too real to be an accident or, God forbid, a daydream, but he still only has a vague idea of what triggers it - and even less how to control it.

Combeferre has turned away from his guests and is rummaging through a trunk.

“You do not have these visions every time you touch an object, do you?” he mutters, head still bowed in the trunk, and Feuilly has to strain to hear correctly. “Your clothes, or this chair - you have not reacted to these, and you must have touched other items on you way here - the omnibus, for example.”

“Yes, still - I was thinking of starting the habit of wearing leather gloves,” Feuilly says lightly. Prouvaire smiles, and presses his arm. “Perhaps it would be helpful, although Courfeyrac might mock me.”

“Yes, he probably would,” Combeferre grins, walking back towards them with a few objects in his hands - a book, an old candlestick, a hat, a sheet of paper. “But before that, if I may ask - would you satisfy my curiosity - and yours, I think - by testing these?”

—-

v.

She gives birth to a little boy in the last week of May; it is a hard, harrowing, bloody night, and in the end she is left weak and unable to go back to work, her body ravaged. The doctor warns her she is not to attempt to bear children again or she will likely not survive the pregnancy. She cries, oh, she cries, for days and nights, finding comfort only in feeding her son. Her husband, clutching desperately to his dreams of a house and a family, takes on other jobs after his day at the factory. He moves crates and merchandise at the docks, and comes home too late to see his wife and son awake at all.

The locket he had given her on their wedding day stays on the small table by their bed, forgotten.

—-

The book does nothing, to the disappointment of everyone in the room; neither does the hat, to Feuilly’s frank relief, nor the paper. The candlestick, however, brings the sweet smell of fresh apples and warm bread, the fragrant autumn breeze in the south of France, and the sight of a tall, soft-spoken woman who looks so familiar, with her dark skin and intelligent gaze. When he comes to, Feuilly looks into Combeferre’s eyes and understands.

“The candlestick belonged to my grandmother,” Combeferre explains and Feuilly describes the vision, and though his eyes are teary, there is a gentle smile on his lips. “She used to invited my siblings and cousins and I for dinner every week - when she passed, each of us took a bit of her home with us - I chose this candlestick.”

Feuilly wants to say something, but does not know what: he feels like an intruder, having witnessed this short moment, this powerful love he has never known for himself.

But Combeferre smiles, clasps his shoulder, and says, still smiling, “Thank you.”

—-

vi.

He leaves a month before their son’s third birthday.

He rises before the sun, as he has seemingly all of his life; his wife is still sleeping. He dresses, kisses her forehead, and walks through the door, taking the direction of the docks.

It’s a week before they find his body floating face down on the Seine, miles from the dock he had been working on when he fell; nobody is arrested, or even fired. He is simply replaced by another young man, also a father with two young daughters to feed and no one thinks much of him again.

Accidents happen, after all.

—-

It is Prouvaire who suggests that the emotional weight that has been given to an object is the trigger to Feuilly’s strange visions of the past. His theory is sound: Feuilly remembers the porcelain mug that had triggered his first vision; he does not know who had owned the mug before him, but he thinks, now, that perhaps it had been part of a set given to a bride on her wedding day, perhaps.

Combeferre nods, satisfied with the explanation for now. He hands Feuilly a pair of leather gloves; “Until we figure out a way to control it,” he says, and Feuilly accepts them gratefully.

The following weeks his own curiosity swells and swells until he cannot contain it anymore; alone in his room he takes off the gloves and concentrate on books, maps, utensils - some objects bring a glimpse of someone else’s life; family, joy, warmth, passion, sometimes mourning or pain, but mostly mundane emotions. Some objects give him nothing, and he breathes, both relieved and surprisingly disappointed.

He does not dare touch the silver locket, not yet. Perhaps it was owned by his mother; perhaps he would see a glimpse of her life, then, maybe a happier time.

But perhaps it wasn’t, perhaps it is just a cheap trinket the orphanage gave a curious child pestering them for answers about his own origin.

He is not sure if he wants to know.

vii.

She cries when she is awake, now, and sleeps the rest of the day away. Her son cries, too - there is no food left. She glances, blearily, at the silver locket left on the bedside table. She will sell it next week, she decides. Up until now, she had not had the heart to; but today has nothing else left to sell, and her son is hungry.

One morning, three weeks after her husband has died, she finally rises from her bed; her son is still thankfully asleep. She looks at the locket, then back at her son. He is small for a three year old - has it already been three years? - but she hopes he will survive longer than she did. She kisses his forehead, like her husband had done, and walks through the door one last time, leaving both the boy and the locket behind.

14 February, 1831

Riots always felt like storms. They rolled in across the city, beginning at one end and spreading until the entirety of Paris was engulfed in rage, a maelstrom of anger and violence and terror. A riot cleansed the people of fury as a storm cleansed the streets of filth, sweeping away grievances and tearing down rotten walls and leaving the city in even greater disrepair than it had been beforehand. Storms left the gutters caked with mud and shit, left puddles of stagnant water in dips and turned downward sloping streets into rivers in their own right, water racing down the cobblestones as it raced towards the Seine. After a storm, the river turned brown, coating riverbank properties in a thin layer of grime.

After a riot the downward sloping streets ran red.

Feuilly stood at his solitary window, face pressed against it despite knowing that he would never see anything, not from here. He could only hear the distant shouting, a constant rumble sometimes broken by the lightning crack of gunshots. A few paces away, curled on his bed, Cosette trembled, jumping at each gunshot, peering up occasionally only to bury her face once more in his only blanket when the shouting returned. Lights burned in a few of the other windows in the building, hinting at men and women also sitting awake, maybe keeping watch like Feuilly, maybe trembling like Cosette, maybe continuing about their routine as though nothing were at all out of the ordinary. After all, Feuilly had told Cosette earlier, his tone laced with the bitterness of recently dashed hopes, the people of Paris had had ample time to grow accustomed to riots.

*

Feuilly met Cosette three days after the last of 1830’s riots, on the coldest day of the winter. He arrived early to work, his recently acquired bruises aching with every step he took, and found the door to the workshop unlocked and the fire already started for the day. A young woman, barely more than a girl, sat as close to the fire as she could, so near that he half feared she would go up in flames at any moment. She wore a heavy woolen dress, one even his untrained eye could see was several years out of style, and had yet to remove either hat or gloves. When she looked up, he saw that her face was still red from cold.

“I’m sorry,” she said, ducking her head a little. “I know I’m not supposed to be here, but it’s so cold in my rooms, I couldn’t stay there an instant longer. I was raised in the south; I’m not used to winter yet.” She spoke with the faintest hint of an accent, a touch of the south that would have given away her origins even if she had not disclosed them outright.

Feuilly, having spent the previous winter in the company of Courfeyrac, who could barely tolerate an autumn’s chill much less the worst winter in living memory, had to smile at that. “I understand,” he told her, white puffs of air accompanying his every word as he exhaled. Then, a little reluctantly, he added, “Did someone let you in?”

“Oh yes,” she assured him. “M. Baudet was very gratified to see that I was so enthusiastic about beginning work.” She grinned, displaying very white teeth, and Feuilly laughed. “I’m Cosette,” she continued. “Is it always this cold here?”

“Last year was worse,” Feuilly told her, shedding his coat and stuffing his own gloves into the pockets. His scarf joined the gloves, and he shivered slightly, rubbing his hands together to remind them how to warm themselves. Cosette shifted a little to make room by the stove. “I’m Feuilly,” he added, and moved to stir the fire, coaxing it to give off at least a little more heat.

The door opened again, letting in two of Feuilly’s coworkers and a blast of frozen air. The fire flickered wildly, and Feuilly winced at the sudden cold. Cosette yelped a little, moving even closer to the fire. Feuilly hoped it was just his imagination that made the fire’s smoke look like it was coming from her rather than from the grate.

Slowly the rest of the workshop’s employees trickled in, their presence helping to heat the room even more than the fire. Feuilly ceded his place by the fire to the other women, allowing them to make Cosette’s acquaintance and instead taking his usual spot at the workbench nearest to the door, effectively making himself into an extra protection from the cold for his fellow workers.

The door slammed open for the final time, admitting M. Baudet himself, his face contorted into a grimace that could have been due to the temperature or due to the necessity of spending any time at all in the workshop. M. Baudet preferred to receive his clients in the warmth and relative luxury of his shop, and he resented every moment he had to spend in the rather less comfortable workshop. He held his pipe firmly between his lips as he spoke, delivering his instructions for the day in an accent rendered nearly incomprehensible by the resulting muscle contortions. Out of the corner of his eye, Feuilly saw Cosette frowning, clearly struggling to understand a word their employer was saying. One of the other workers, a widow who supported four children on a fan painter’s meager salary, a sympathetic brother-in-law’s occasional contribution, and a mother’s iron determination, caught Cosette’s eye and, as M. Baudet finished his instructions and hurried from the workshop, repeated his words in an accent that did not require several weeks intense study to understand. Feuilly looked away, pleased that his intervention would not be needed, and reached for his first fan of the day.

*

The cold snap broke on the first Friday of the new year, the temperature creeping back up above zero to create a thin coat of water on every patch of ice, invisible in all but the right light and deadly as any epidemic. In the first week alone three of Feuilly’s colleagues injured themselves badly on the suddenly treacherous streets, showing up limping and battered to work if they were able or scrambling to make ends meet if they were not. Feuilly himself found his feet abruptly losing their grip on the ground on multiple occasions, and had to reluctantly thank Bahorel and Grantaire for their insistence that he learn to dance and to box when each time found his body reacting instinctively and contorting itself in such a way that he received no injuries greater than bruises for his clumsiness. Neither of his patrons were so lucky, and Feuilly found it hard to keep from smiling as both Bahorel and Grantaire found themselves laid up, the latter with a pair of sprained wrists and the former with a broken nose, fractured ankle, and promise of eternal vengeance against the cobblestones which had betrayed him so.

Cosette, suddenly radiant with the return of the sun, feeble as it was, arrived at work the next Monday wearing a dress of pale blue, its sleeves each larger than her waist, trimmed with just a hint of lace. From the way she moved in it, Feuilly could tell that it was new, something she had purchased with her first set of earnings and not yet become accustomed to seeing. She smiled brilliantly at him as she passed, her steps light on the workshop’s worn floorboards. Seeing her, Feuilly felt his heart sink a little. He had spent enough time among women to know their language, to interpret their signals, to understand their intentions. Cosette, young, pretty, well dressed, had come from the provinces not to work but to love, or at least to play at it until she had exhausted her youth. He could not begrudge her the ambition, not when he had only to look around him to see the fates of women whose ambitions had gone in other directions, but he could not suppress the disappointment at seeing her so attired. He looked down, not returning her smile. Women seeking to attract men wanted either a purse or a heart free from distractions, and Feuilly could offer neither.

*

“What are you reading?”

Feuilly jumped a little, his head jerking up to find Cosette looking curiously at him. Apart from him, she was the only one of the workers who had not taken advantage of their mid-morning break to bask in the winter sunlight — an odd choice for her — and now she stood a few paces away from him, her hands clasped in front of her.

“Dante,” he said, looking back down at his book. He had not spoken more than a few words to Cosette since the first day, nor indeed had he given her much thought. She infused the workshop with cheer and seemed to carry her own light, but Feuilly preferred the radiance of justice to the gleam of youth and so had kept his distance, too near to the flame of political discontent to be distracted by her more localized glow.

“I haven’t read that,” Cosette said, apparently determined to engage him in conversation. “Monseigneur always spoke very highly of his work though. Do you like it?”

Feuilly shrugged. “I only just started reading,” he said. “If you’re interested in discussing it properly I can refer you to the friend who loaned me his copy.” He turned a page.

He heard a slight rustling which, even without looking up, he identified as Cosette moving closer. A moment later she had sat down on the bench across from him, ankles tucked demurely under her skirts, gaze open and terribly, terribly young. “Are you trying to get rid of me?” she asked, and Feuilly swallowed a sigh, looking up at her once again.

“No,” he said, not entirely untruthfully. “But I very sincerely doubt that our goals have much in common, and I would not like to encourage any false ideas of me that you may have.”

Rather than discouraging her, this earned him a peal of laughter. “Shall I stop thinking of you as a terribly serious man who has made it his personal mission to bring light to the darkest corners of the Earth?” she asked. “Have your fellow workers been spreading untrue gossip about you while you sit in here and expand your mind?”

“I wish to deliver the world from ignorance,” Feuilly informed her. “And if in order to do that I am required to travel to each of its corners myself and bring the light of knowledge then so be it.”

“So they were telling the truth after all,” Cosette said. Then, her voice taking on a more thoughtful tone, she added, “You would have liked Monseigneur. He had a similar dream, though he brought his light with the gospel rather than with Italian poetry. But each man has his own tools, I suppose.” For a moment she was silent, and Feuilly thought that would be all. He looked back down at his book, eyes scanning the slightly faded print in an effort to recover his place.

“I am curious though,” Cosette said, speaking precisely as he had managed to find where he’d left off. “What makes you say that our goals are so different? What have the others been saying about me that led you to that conclusion?”

“Nothing at all,” Feuilly said with another shrug. “Or, rather, I’ve no idea what the others say about you, though I imagine several are jealous enough to be unkind. Do you mean to imply that your ambitions do match mine?”

She laughed again. “I could never oppose anyone who aimed to bring light into the darkness,” she said. “Though your approach could use work. How can you expect the people to listen to you if you will not meet them first?” Then she shrugged, a graceful little movement that caused the top of her sleeves to brush her neatly pinned hair. “But each man must find his own path, I suppose. I only wondered if I had offended you somehow — you have quite assiduously avoided me for weeks now.”

"You haven’t,” Feuilly assured her. “I did not mean to imply otherwise.” Then, because he was not a dishonest man, he added, “Though if you are considering pursuing further acquaintance with me, I should warn you that I am hardly wealthy, nor likely to ever become so.”

“Monseigneur always said that those who were materially rich were the poorest men he’d ever known,” Cosette said.

“Your Monseigneur sounds like a clever man,” Feuilly said, and she positively lit up.

“He was,” she said. “He was the wisest man in the world, and the kindest.” She sighed, looking down at her lap. “I miss him,” she said quietly. “Though I don’t think he would want me to.”

“If you loved him then it would be strange if you didn’t miss him,” Feuilly said, thinking as he spoke that he was entirely unqualified to make such a statement, not when he could count on two hands the people he loved and all of them still lived.

“His time here was done,” Cosette said. “It would be selfish of me to begrudge him the chance to be with God, not when there are none who deserve that chance more than him.” Then she shook her head, and looked up once again, meeting Feuilly’s eyes and smiling again. “I’m glad you don’t think badly of me after all. I hated to think that I might have caused offense and not realized it; things are so different here than they are at home, and I’m still so off balance.”

“You’re fitting in well,” Feuilly said, and she beamed at him, rising and shaking her skirts back into place.

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” she said. “I hope you find Dante to your taste.”

“Thank you,” Feuilly murmured, then swallowed a grimace as the door opened to let in the other workers, sign that it was time to resume work. Jean Prouvaire’s book disappeared back into Feuilly’s coat pocket and he went to prepare his brushes, steeling himself for the rest of what promised to be a very long day.

*

“What are you reading?”

Feuilly felt odd asking the question, but he and Cosette were once again the first people in the workshop and he had arrived to find her curled up in the room’s only patch of sun, head bent over a small volume whose cover was entirely hidden by her voluminous skirts.

As he had a few weeks earlier, Cosette started at the interruption, shaking herself from her state of concentration and offering him a smile of welcome. He returned it, the gesture still not quite reflex.

“Jeanne lent it to me,” she said, lifting the book from her lap to show him the title. A romance, by the look of it, and not an especially sophisticated one at that. Feuilly fought to keep his expression neutral.

Clearly he did not fight hard enough, because she laughed. “Not as illustrious as Dante, I know,” she said, nodding to the lump in his pocket. “But it’s more enthralling by far.”

“If you enjoy that sort of thing,” Feuilly said.

“What is there not to like in stories of love and tragedy?” Cosette wanted to know.

“I prefer history to fantasy,” Feuilly said.

“Monseigneur always said they were one and the same, if you knew how to tell them,” Cosette said. “And my mother taught me that there is nothing more important than love, and that love inevitably leads to tragedy.”

“And what do you think?” Feuilly asked, raising his eyebrows. “Or have you allowed your mother and your Monseigneur to form all your opinions?”

The words came out more sharply than he had intended, and she frowned, setting the book aside. “I think there is nothing more important than love,” she said, voice fierce. “And I think that if you want to change the world you’ll have to think so too.”

“You said yourself, love leads to tragedy,” Feuilly said. “We have more than enough tragedy already.”

“Some tragedies are worth experiencing,” Cosette informed him. She picked up the book again and resolutely bowed her head once more over the page.

*

February crept through the city like a thief at midnight, bringing with it a monstrous storm that sent torrents of rain cascading through the streets and through innumerable roofs. Feuilly sacrificed every vessel he could find to the task of catching water, and spent as much of his time as possible either in the workshop or in the Musain, both of which had sturdier roofs than he could afford to rent for himself. With the rain came a return of the cold, less sharp than it had been earlier in the year but more insidious. Wet clothes refused to dry, and manipulating the paints needed to decorate M. Baudet’s fans became increasingly difficult as both they and the fans reacted to the inescapable damp. All but the irrepressible gamins and the equally irrepressible Jean Prouvaire spent as much time as possible indoors or huddled under awnings or umbrellas. Those who did choose to enjoy the rain as nature had intended them to walked about with their hair plastered to their skulls and their shoes squelching with each step, so soaked were they with rainwater and mud. Even Enjolras, usually as oblivious to the caprices of the weather as he was to anything else not related to the country’s political temperament or the moods of his friends, commented on the sudden foul turn the skies had taken, and Combeferre wondered aloud about ill omens and angry Gods. Feuilly, less prone to flights of philosophic inquiry than his friend, sat as close to the Musain’s fire as he could stand and did what he could to keep his books drier than he was.

*

“I’m terribly sorry, I simply can’t make it tomorrow.” Combeferre, his face haggard and hair in complete disarray, looked up at Feuilly for an instant before returning to his slightly frantic rummaging through his desk. “We’re overwhelmed at the hospital, and we need all the help we can possibly get. If it were any other time I would make the effort to find someone to take my place, but even the doctors are catching this fever and we don’t have anyone left to call.”

Privately, Feuilly thought that what Combeferre actually needed to be doing the following evening was retiring early and getting some sleep, but he held his tongue. He knew as well as any that the needs of society often did not leave room for the needs of the body, and Combeferre was the type who would push himself until he collapsed from exhaustion if it meant that he could save just one extra person. So instead he smiled. “It’s all right,” he said. “You can make it up to me later.”

“I will,” Combeferre promised, pulling open a drawer and removing a thin book with a sudden, “A-ha!” He reached for his spectacles, failed to find them, and promptly put the book back in the drawer as he began searching once more through the piles of papers and assorted miscellanea that entirely covered the desk’s polished surface. Feuilly had once thought Combeferre the very picture of restraint and organization, but several years of acquaintance had quite thoroughly cured him of these illusions. Combeferre had all the qualities of true genius, including the ability to memorize a book in a few hours and the inability to ever find the physical volume again once he’d set it down.

"I’ll tell Courfeyrac not to bother you for a few days,” Feuilly promised, picking his way to the door. Combeferre sent him a distracted smile of thanks, most of his mind still focused on finding everything he needed for his classes the next day. Feuilly left him to it.

*

“Cosette?”

The young woman paused in adjusting her bonnet, twisting to look at Feuilly. He hesitated, still not certain quite why he thought this would be a good idea. The thought had come to him the night before, returning from Combeferre’s lodgings, and, when a night’s sleep had not cured him of the inclination, he had decided to go forward with it. Now, faced with the task of actually offering the invitation, he wished he had not been quite so hasty.

“Did you need me for something?” Cosette asked. They had not talked much since nearly quarreling about romance novels, and now she looked at him with faint confusion and wariness.

“Have you plans for tonight?”

She blinked, surprise washing over her face before being replaced once more with slight confusion. “Not at the moment.”

He took a breath, attempted briefly to convince himself that he had no reason to be apprehensive, as he was extending the invitation strictly as a friend making up for a potential offense, failed utterly to do so, and said, “I had made plans with a friend to attend a concert tonight, but he can no longer make it. I have a spare seat, and I wondered if you might be interested in joining me.” He paused, then added, “It’s a symphony about love.”

She blinked again, then laughed, confusion vanishing in the face of her sudden mirth. “Were you anyone else, I would accuse you of attempting to seduce me,” she said when she had recovered her breath a little. “But your friend really did cancel, didn’t he?”

“Of course he did,” Feuilly said, a little annoyed. “I do not make a habit of telling falsehoods.”

“No, it’s true, you don’t,” Cosette said, sobering again. “Dare I ask why you asked me and not one of your other friends?”

"I’m forbidden from attending the theatre with nearly all of them,” Feuilly admitted. “And I wanted to apologize for offending you the last time we spoke.”

“And you just happened to have a free ticket to the symphony,” Cosette said with a grin. “How entirely convenient for you.” She finished fiddling with her bonnet and offered him her arm. “I would be delighted to accompany you to the symphony this evening, even if you are only doing it to win back my good opinion of you.”

“I’m not…” Feuilly began, then shook his head and took her arm. From the way she laughed again, he suspected that this had been the best possible response.

*

Feuilly could feel the unrest in his bones hours before the riot itself started. Despite his late night he woke early the morning after the symphony, restless in a way he had come to recognize all too easily. Feuilly knew Paris like a sister, knew her moods and her sorrows, read her moods like he read her newspapers. He had felt her creeping towards eruption for days, but when he woke on the morning of the 14th he knew with a certainty he could not even begin to explain that this would be the day it boiled over.

The gamins in the streets knew Paris even more intimately than he did, and he passed more of them on his way to work than he had in months, all scampering to and fro with an urgency he did not usually associate with their kind. He kept one hand on his purse, but not one of the city’s children even gave him so much as a glance, too busy scurrying from place to place, bickering with each other in their own private argot, half pure Parisian dialect half the language of children. Feuilly could no more decipher the argot of gamins than he could Combeferre and Joly’s medical textbooks, but he could catch the urgency in their communications, the wildness of anticipation like the charge in the air just before a storm. He pulled his cap down over his forehead and quickened his step.

The day passed in fits and jolts, with everyone in the workshop on alert to every single noise, every new passerby, every sign that something had happened. M. Baudet himself had to come into the workshop several times to reprimand them all for not working quickly enough; his words would have had more effect had the pipe he been furiously chewing not been upside-down, sign that he was as distracted as any of his workers. No one talked, all too filled with nervous energy to expend any of it on conversation. Even Cosette, who had not had the time to become accustomed to the taste of politics, seemed on edge, her usual good cheer muted and hesitant.

They received word at six. A mob had broken into Archbishop’s Palace, the breathless gamin told them, his hands extended for coins as a reward for the information. The concierge had gone to fetch help from the police, but the mob was determined to wreck everything they could find until they got their hands on the Archbishop himself.

Cosette was not the only one who turned pale at the news, her hand joining a flurry of others to make the sign of the cross in horrified sympathy at the Archbishop’s plight. Feuilly, who had never been particularly fond of either the Archbishop himself or his position in general, focused on the expectant gamin. “Will it spread, do you think?” he asked.

“Who knows?” the urchin said with a shrug. “Can’t predict a riot M’sieur.”

“I know,” Feuilly said, digging through his purse and dropping a few sous into the child’s still waiting hand. “You stay out of it, understand? Mobs are no place for children.”

The gamin, having made his newly acquired cash vanish into his ragged clothing as though by magic, gave Feuilly a supremely unconcerned shrug. “If you say so M’sieur,” he said. “Good place as any, I say, and you can make a fortune if you try.”

“And no one will think to look for you if you get crushed,” Feuilly pointed out.

“No one looks for us now,” the gamin retorted.

To this Feuilly had no reply, and a moment later the gamin raced off, no doubt going to spread the news and beg for coins at the next workshop. Feuilly watched him go, trying almost unconsciously to memorize his retreating figure, just in case.

"What will happen to him?”

The voice was Cosette’s, who had come up next to him sometime during Feuilly’s brief exchange with the gamin.

“God willing he’ll come out of tonight intact and a few francs richer,” Feuilly said. “Not all his companions will be so fortunate.”

“That’s awful,” Cosette said, hugging herself tightly. “Someone should do something.”

“Would you lock them up for the duration?” Feuilly asked with a weary sigh. “Or chain them as though they were convicts?”

“No! But we shouldn’t let them get themselves killed either!”

Feuilly sighed again. “You heard him; we let them get killed anyway, mob or no mob. It’s one of the greatest tyrannies of the age.” Then he shook himself, turning to focus more fully on her. “Can you make it back to your lodgings safely tonight?”

Cosette bit her lip. “I… I’m not certain,” she admitted. “I don’t know Paris well enough to be sure of finding my way through something like this. Does it happen often?”

“Often enough,” Feuilly said. Around them, the workshop had erupted into conversation, their fellow workers sorting themselves into camps based on their opinions of the republican rioters and shooting censorious looks at each other as they compared this potential riots to all the others in previous months. Feuilly noticed with disappointment but not surprise that the anti-republican camp was the larger of the two by far. He turned his attention back to Cosette. “You’ll learn to deal with it soon enough, but for tonight you’d better come back with me instead of trying to make your way to your rooms. It’ll be safer that way.”

He half expected Cosette to protest that she did not need protecting, as both Bahorel’s and Joly’s mistresses would have, but she only nodded, her face very white and her eyes very big. Feuilly was abruptly reminded of how very young she still was, womanly attire or no. He pulled on his coat. “Let’s go,” he said. “Before it gets any worse.”

The gamin’s announcement had effectively signaled the end of the day, and Feuilly did not take the time to alert M. Baudet of his departure before he and Cosette left, though he did scoop up the last of his fans for the day, slipping them into an inside pocket of his coat to finish once he reached his rooms. The need for fuel to stave off winter’s deadly chill had eaten nearly all his savings, and he could not afford to let even a few fans go unattended.

Outside the streets were nearly deserted. Feuilly took Cosette’s arm and quickened his pace, alert for any ruffians who might choose to take advantage of the city’s disarray to ply their trade more openly.

“Where is everyone?” Cosette asked, her voice unnaturally loud against the surrounding stillness.

“Either inside or participating,” Feuilly said. His own friends, he knew, would likely be with the mob, gleefully destroying the Archbishop’s possessions. Were it not for his self-imposed duty to Cosette, he might have considered joining them, if only to ensure for himself that they all made it out alive. He tightened his grip on Cosette’s elbow and kept walking.

It did not take long to reach his rooms, and his landlady let them in with an obvious look of relief. She knew his proclivity for participating in civil unrest, and more than once he’d been forced to hide injuries from her, less she declare him a dangerous tenant and throw him onto the street. He gave her a nod now and guided Cosette down the hallway to his room.

Once inside, Cosette all but collapsed onto Feuilly’s bed, trembling. Feuilly, after a moment’s hesitation, went to the window instead and pulled it open, sticking his head out. Only the faintest shouts could be heard, sign that the mob had not yet decided to abandon their plump target and come surging towards the poorer end of Paris. He lit a candle and carefully shut the window once again. When he turned back towards the bed, Cosette had hidden her face in her hands. A little awkwardly, he sat next to her.

“It will be all right,” he said, his words sounding hollow even to his own ears.

“How can it be all right?” she demanded, voice muffled but still fierce. “People are dying!”

"We don’t know that anyone has died,” Feuilly said. “Sometimes no one does.”

Cosette raised her head to glare at him. “My mother lived in Paris before I was born,” she said. “She told me about riots. No one ever gets out completely unscathed.”

“Injured isn’t the same thing as dead,” Feuilly said, then sighed. “But you’re right, someone probably will die tonight, and likely several people. But we can’t do anything about it now, not after it’s already started. It has to wear itself out.”

“How can you sit there and say that?” Cosette demanded. “How can you not care about the people who might be trampled?”

Feuilly swallowed, fighting not to let her words conjure up vivid memories of precisely that. “I do care,” he said. “But caring won’t help, not if you’re one of the ones who ends up killed because you tried to tame the hurricane.” He swallowed again and kept his eyes fixed on a point on the wall above her shoulder. “When it’s over we can provide aid to the injured and comfort to the families of the dead. Until then the only thing to do is to wait.”

"Monseigneur always said that waiting was the hardest thing any person could do,” Cosette said. “I always hated when he said that.”

“You should listen to him,” Feuilly said.

She scowled. “I know that,” she snapped. “He knew everything and he was always right. But it’s not easy to do something that you feel in your heart is wrong, you know.”

“You think I don’t want to be out there as much as you do?” Feuilly demanded, crossing his arms. “But I know that it’s not my place, and I know that I would only put both of us in danger if I did go.” He paused, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “If you want to try and stop the next one be my guest, but I cannot let you get yourself killed when you are my responsibility, particularly not since your mother and your Monseigneur are no doubt watching the both of us even as we speak.”

Cosette didn’t answer this. She was still trembling, shaking even, though from which combination of emotions Feuilly could not tell. After a moment, he rose and went back to the window, keeping it closed but holding the candle in a vain attempt to see something other than his own reflection.

At last, her voice numb, Cosette said, “Last night we were laughing at the hats of bourgeois, and tonight there are people dying in the streets.”

To this Feuilly had no reply, and once again Cosette fell silent.

*

Neither of them left the building the next day.

*

“Thank you,” Cosette said, as she and Feuilly stood outside the door to her rooms. She looked impossibly weary, her clothes wrinkled and her hair half undone from its careful pins. Feuilly knew that he looked no better — neither of them had slept the previous night, too filled with nerves and fear to even contemplate resting.

“It was nothing,” he said. “Any friend would have offered the same.”

“But you’re the one who did,” Cosette said. “So thank you.”

He nodded, too tired both physically and emotionally to think of a response.

She took her basket from him and unlocked the door, her key hanging on a ribbon around her neck. Just before entering her room she paused, turning back to look at him. “Monseigneur would have been proud of you,” she said. “For taking care of me instead of joining the crowd.”

Feuilly looked away, not quite certain what to do with that statement. At least he said, “He’d have been proud of you too, I think.”

The smile she offered him was a far cry from her usual sunny brilliance, but for the first time Feuilly felt as though he were sharing in her light. “I hope so,” she said, and stepped through the door.