#midsummerminimis

minimisfest:

A Little Fall of Meteors
fic by bobcatmoran
art by pilferingapplesanddiminutive-fox

“Does anyone know where Jean Prouvaire is?” Enjolras asked, looking over the back room of the Musain with a frown.

“Don’t fret about it, Enjolras,” Courfeyrac said. “He is doubtless running on Prouvairian time — that is to say, that of one who left his watch at home, either out of forgetfulness or due to some new notion that time is but an illusion.”

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reblogging for more art, here from diminutive-fox ! Thank you!

A Little Fall of Meteors
fic by bobcatmoran
art by pilferingapplesanddiminutive-fox

“Does anyone know where Jean Prouvaire is?” Enjolras asked, looking over the back room of the Musain with a frown.

“Don’t fret about it, Enjolras,” Courfeyrac said. “He is doubtless running on Prouvairian time — that is to say, that of one who left his watch at home, either out of forgetfulness or due to some new notion that time is but an illusion.”

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 throughit.”

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.

 A/N: arrivisting found out the cool cookie protests!

“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 yourpun-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.”

Poème, symphonie, orage, 
fic by kingedmundsroyalmurder 
art by nisiedrawsstuff


(A/N: set in the Nothing Hurts AU, where Fantine traveled to Digny with Cosette. Warning for canon-era political violence)

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.”

Bahorel and Grantaire, the other members of the unveiling party, wisely choose to remain silent. Bahorel is grinning widely, and there is eagerness in the way he leans forward; Grantaire just shakes his head, a small smile on his face.

“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.

Hedoeswant 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 theywere?”

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’sa 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.

***

“Standstill.”

“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 justcalled 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 fre

TITLE: Let Me Bid You Farewell
fic:sashaatthebarricade (satb31 on AO3)
Art:clenster​

SUMMARY: On the night before the barricades fall, Combeferre reminisces about his past relationship with Joly during medical school.

WARNINGS: Brief sexual references and discussions of death, both barricade-related and otherwise.

NOTES: My source of information about the lives of medical students in 19^th century France was Florent Palluault’s dissertation Medical Students in England and France, 1815-1858: A Comparative Study (University of Oxford, 2003). It was an absolutely invaluable resource to me as I developed my vision for Combeferre and Joly’s lives as medical students in Paris in the late 1820s and early 1830s.

I must express my deepest thanks to maraschinocheri,crazyinjune, and clenster for serving as betas.

The title comes from the Dire Straits classic Brothers in Arms.

The men are gathered in a corner of the bistro, their carbines resting on the backs of their chairs, listening to Prouvaire recite a poem. As the young man speaks of innocence and love, Combeferre stands apart from the group, watching them soberly and silently.

Combeferre knows that every man in that room will soon see death.

And Combeferre steps outside, unable to watch any longer.

Once on the street Combeferre reaches into his pocket, where he has a packet of tobacco and some rolling papers. His fingers are swollen and trembling as he rolls himself a cigarette and lights it, waiting for the head rush to kick in and help him push aside all of his concerns about the gunpowder, about the National Guard, about Enjolras’s fierce and unpredictable temper.

“Combeferre?” comes a familiar voice.

Combeferre turns toward Joly, noticing even in the darkness how pale he is — and how extraordinarily calm he is.

“May I?” he asks, gesturing toward Combeferre’s cigarette, his voice barely above a whisper.

Wordlessly Combeferre passes it to him, his fingers brushing up against Joly’s as he does. Joly inhales, gazing off into the distance, watching the sentries at the top of the barricade.

Why is Joly here? Combeferre cannot help but wonder. He should be in his rooms right now, tucked into his perfectly aligned bed, worrying about the color of his tongue, not sharing Combeferre’s lingering concern about the status of their gunpowder supply.

Combeferre does not fear his own death.

But he is already mourning his beloved Joly’s.

**

They met as first-year students at medical school; two men newly arrived from the south in a quest to adopt medicine as a profession. They initially bonded over their common origins, but they were complete opposites — Combeferre, haughty and austere, a man who loved learning and philosophy and books, and the garrulous Joly, his good humor tempered by a brow permanently crinkled with worry about the state of his own health.

Many times they ended up sitting next to each other at lectures, exchanging vague pleasantries while waiting for the speaker to arrive. But despite the warm autumn weather, Combeferre noticed that Joly’s nose seemed to be perpetually runny — he was constantly sniffling into his handkerchief. Most days Combeferre shook his head as he walked out of the lectures and headed toward the hospital, wondering how Joly even managed to get himself out of bed and to lectures each day. He was convinced that there was absolutely no way Joly would survive until winter.

But then winter came — and they were paired together for dissections.

In the abstract, Combeferre was aware that medical school would require him to work with corpses. But from the first moment he walked into the room where the dissections took place, the stench of death overwhelmed him so much he had to pull his cravat up over his nose and mouth. And when he was faced with his first cadaver — a man, and a young one at that — he found himself sweating profusely despite the chill of the room itself. Feeling light-headed, he had to beat a quick retreat to the corridor, where he collapsed on the floor, leaning up against the wall. He drew his knees up to his chest and buried his face in his arms, willing the nausea to pass.

“Are you all right?” came a congested voice he instantly recognized as Joly’s.

Combeferre jerked his head up and tried to compose himself in front of his colleague. “I will be fine in a moment — no need to worry about me,” he said, hoping he did not look as weak as he felt.

Joly took a seat next to him, sitting as closely as he could to Combeferre without actually touching him. “You should probably know I specialize in worry,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning up in a reassuring grin.

“I must get used to it, is it not so?” Combeferre asked, realizing what the answer would be even as the words left his mouth. “If this is to be my life’s calling, certainly.”

“Indeed,” Joly nodded. “I am very fortunate in that the sight of the dead does not bother me in the slightest. But I cannot seem to master the material in the lectures as you do. Perhaps we can study together, you and me.”

Combeferre managed a wan smile, despite the bile that still churned in his stomach. He hesitated only briefly before he pronounced, “I believe that is a brilliant idea.”

Joly reached over and tentatively patted him on the knee.

And a friendship began.

**

After that day they started to spend more and more time together — traveling from the hospital to the school together each morning, and dining together every evening. Combeferre tutored Joly in the academic subjects as they huddled together in Combeferre’s cramped rooms going over their notes and reviewing the textbooks, while trying to calm Joly’s nerves every time he insisted that he suffered from whatever ailment they were learning about.

For his part, Joly helped Combeferre overcome his squeamishness as they worked together on their dissections, distracting him with humor and freshly laundered handkerchiefs throughout each lesson.

In their free time they explored the city together. On Sundays they would take excursions around the city, observing the flora and fauna on lengthy walks that lasted for hours — inevitably they would be so engrossed in conversation that they would wander very far from their section of the city, and would have to find creative ways to get themselves back home. Once or twice they ventured to the Louvre, where they would talk excitedly about the works on exhibition, or they would partake in the theatre that Combeferre was falling in love with. They frequently spoke in agitated tones about the political situation in France, and of their common commitment to the ideals of the Revolution – ideals that had played a part in both of their decisions to pursue medicine as a career.

Neither man engaged in the love affairs that were so common among their fellow students — Combeferre demonstrated no interest in such matters, while Joly’s attempts to meet a young grisette were half-hearted at best. Their fellow students sometimes teased them that they were like a married couple themselves, teasing that irked Combeferre and amused Joly.

“I do not know why they insist on saying those things,” Combeferre huffed one evening, as they were finishing their meal.

Joly shrugged. “Let them have their fun. We both know it is far from the truth,” he said as he signaled for more wine. “We enjoy each other’s company. What is wrong with that?”

Combeferre busied himself with adjusting his napkin. “Nothing at all,” he mumbled.

But in the far recesses of his mind, he worried that perhaps their colleagues realized something he and Joly did not.

**

On a sultry early summer evening in their second year, Combeferre was sitting at his desk, carefully transcribing his notes while he waited for Joly to return from his rounds at the hospital. Twilight was approaching, as was a thunderstorm — and the arrival of both without Joly’s return concerned Combeferre, who knew his friend would have been eager to complete his work and meet for dinner before the cloudburst.

The rain had just begun in earnest when Joly appeared, entering Combeferre’s rooms without knocking, as was his custom. His hair was plastered to his forehead and his clothes were soaked through.

And his eyes were full of tears.

“Joly?” Combeferre leaped out of his chair at the sight of his friend’s distress.

“I lost her,” Joly whispered.

Combeferre felt certain he knew exactly who Joly was referring to — it was a young woman, although he was not familiar with all of the details of her case. But this was the first time Joly had lost a patient he had worked with so closely, despite all of his efforts on her behalf.

Their conversations about death had been frequent and clinical — after all, they spent so much time among the deceased and the dying, it was something from which they had detached themselves, something they joked about in the full knowledge that it was something they would witness every day in their chosen line of work. Joly always boasted that he was acclimated to it.

It was clear that Joly was wrong.

Impulsively and awkwardly Combeferre embraced him, holding his shaking body as Joly began to weep into Combeferre’s shoulder. Combeferre was helpless to do anything more than stroke his back gently, and listen to his cries.

Combeferre was not a man who demonstrated emotion — but the sight of this good man, his friend and companion, destroyed by the death of a complete stranger, made him forget himself.

And he kissed Joly softly on the top of his head.

Joly pulled back at the touch of Combeferre’s lips, searching his face with red-rimmed eyes. Combeferre had never thought of Joly as anything more than his closest friend and study partner — but now he was wondering if they could be something more.

And from the look in Joly’s eyes, Combeferre felt sure he was wondering the exact same thing.

In retrospect Combeferre could never remember who kissed whom first, or how they wound up on his tiny bed, tugging at each other’s clothing with a need neither of them knew they had bottled up inside them.

But he remembered the sight of Joly’s face, completely at peace as they came together as one — for once not worried about examinations or the cholera.

He remembered how good and safe and warm it felt to lie there afterwards, his head on Joly’s bare chest as the thunder and lightning raged and the rain beat down on the roof above them.

“Check my pulse,” Joly whispered as he stroked Combeferre’s hair.

Combeferre wrapped his fingers around Joly’s slender wrist, touching his index finger to Joly’s artery. “I think you will live,” he murmured, just before he drifted off to sleep.

When he awakened the next morning, his body still entangled with Joly’s, he felt sure he could do this every night.

And every night for the next year, they did.

Until the revolution eventually beckoned.

**

The next spring, on a cool evening toward the end of the academic year, Combeferre was dining with Joly at a favorite restaurant when they happened to encounter an old and beloved friend of Combeferre’s — a man by the name of Enjolras. They invited Enjolras and the friend he was with, who introduced himself as Courfeyrac — to join them for dinner. The four men spent the evening in debate at an ever-increasing volume about the political situation in France.

And Les Amis de l’ABC was born.

The early days of their group were heady ones, as others joined them in their cause and their collective excitement and agitation took root. Combeferre found himself an accidental leader of the group, his intellect and reason serving as a model for the other students. Enjolras saw him as his right hand man, while his debates with Courfeyrac helped each man hone his arguments. He also found himself spending more and more time with Prouvaire, the young poet, who would banish his initial shyness and reticence at Combeferre’s encouragement, speaking of love and death and beauty with an unparalleled eloquence.

For his part, Joly was an enthusiastic member of Les Amis, but he was also occupied with other things — theoretically, he and Combeferre were both supposed to be preparing for exams, but instead Joly spent far too many evenings drinking with Bossuet, a perpetually unlucky law student who often found himself homeless. Joly frequently took Bossuet in, sharing his rooms whenever his friend was down on his luck. He thrived on Bossuet’s company; his good nature and infectious optimism was a balm to Joly’s nerves.

Combeferre and Joly continued to see each other at school — they still studied together, still dissected together, still dined together.

But after dinner they would go to the Musain, and retreat to their separate corners; Combeferre would join Prouvaire and Courfeyrac by the fire, where they would spend the evening huddled close together, discussing obscure philosophers, while Joly would seek out Bossuet and Grantaire’s table, where they would drink copious amounts of wine and pepper their political conversations with talk about their various exploits around Paris. Grantaire and Bossuet had each had numerous lovers since their arrival in the city, and Joly was intrigued by their experiences.

At the end of the night, Combeferre and Joly would reunite, and sometimes they would return to Combeferre’s rooms.

But more and more frequently, Combeferre would go to his writing desk, giving the excuse that he had books to read or treatises to write, and Joly would nod agreeably and return to his rooms, sometimes with an inebriated Grantaire — or more and more frequently, the luckless Bossuet — in tow.

Even as they were coming together in a common cause, they were coming apart as a couple.

Joly himself did not seem unhappy with the situation; in fact, more often than not, Combeferre noticed Joly displaying an intimacy with Bossuet that he had previously demonstrated with Combeferre. For his part, Combeferre told himself it was natural — after all, relationships just ran their course, he assured himself. He had a higher calling, he believed — the future of the revolution depended on him, after all, and he could not let his relationship with Joly distract him. Deep down, though, there was another reason he started pushing Joly away.

Combeferre knew that if things went as planned, he was going to die.

And he wanted nothing more than for Joly to live.

**

For a long while after their relationship withered, Combeferre always thought that when the barricades eventually rose, Joly would allow his anxiety to get the best of him. He envisioned a scenario in which Bossuet would convince Joly to stay away, or that Joly would choose of his own volition to wait out the violence with the grisette he was rumored to be courting.

But Joly was a man of his convictions, and when this fight began, he stepped up right beside the rest of the group — and now, Combeferre cannot understand why he ever doubted him. He knew better than anyone that Joly’s desire to heal the sick was borne of the revolutionary belief in liberty and equality — and that it was a belief he would fight for.

And now here they are, behind a barricade — awaiting the inevitable.

As they stand in the darkness, passing the cigarette back and forth in silence, thunder rumbles in the distance.

And as a light rain begins to mist around them, Joly smiles slightly at Combeferre, the cigarette dangling from his lips as he extends his arm toward his friend and former lover. “Feel my pulse, Combeferre,” he says, the voice as familiar to Combeferre as the back of his own hand.

Combeferre wraps his long fingers around Joly’s slender wrist, feeling his heart beating. To Combeferre’s surprise, Joly’s pulse is completely normal.

“I think you will live,” Combeferre says quietly, aware that they both know he is lying.

And without thinking, he pulls Joly into a long and hard embrace. Combeferre strokes Joly’s back, feeling each muscle and bone that is as familiar to him as his own, trying to convey with touch what he cannot convey with words.

And as the rain begins to fall harder, they come together as they once did in Combeferre’s rooms.

Coming together in a final farewell.

Pas de Deux
fic by saintjustified / Germinal on AO3
art by bootsssss

(warning for discussion of abuse)
****

For Marius, being introduced by Courfeyrac to Les Amis de l’ABC had only confirmed in him longstanding suspicions regarding his own innate unsuitability for society.

Some time prior to the incident, during his period of political and emotional separation from his grandfather but inability to leave his grandfather’s house, Marius had, on principle, made the choice to shun all parts of the building that he thought of as exclusively Gillenormand’s domain. This enemy territory, marked most distinctly by the fleur-de-lys scattered over tapestries, curtains, cushions and ceiling-panels, included the entire first floor and the garden, though which Marius had taken himself as rapidly as possible on his way into or out of the house. It also included, more vexingly, the library, so that Marius, when listlessly confining himself to his room beneath the roof, had frequently found himself at a loss for reading material. In the portions of the house that he allowed himself to use he could find only that day’s Drapeau Blanc and other items just as disagreeable.

Made desperate by boredom, he had taken to reading his aunt’s editions of the etiquette books of Madame Celnart, which related in meticulous detail how to arrange, organise and behave at social and domestic visits, soirées and salons. His aunt, to judge by her cloistered lifestyle, used these volumes more as a form of escapist literature than a practical guide. Having little else to read, Marius had become uncomfortably and alarmingly familiar with the rituals enumerated on their pages, and, having read little else on current social niceties, he had taken far too much of it too deeply to heart. The recommendations on the rules of dancing, in particular, had stayed imprinted on his mind, and still rose to the surface at inopportune moments. There had been, for instance, this advice:

“Never hazard taking part in a quadrille unless you know how to dance tolerably. If you are a novice or but little skilled, you would bring disorder into the midst of pleasure. Beware also of taking your place in a set of dancers more skilful than yourself… refrain from great leaps and ridiculous jumps which would attract the attention of all towards you.”

Marius had long regarded dancing in general and the quadrille in particular as an outlandish terror to which he hoped never to find himself subjected. But, in broader terms, he often felt as though his entire life had been spent failing to abide by this advice – not merely in the ballroom but in the street, the salon, and the lecture-hall alike.

As a metaphor, it was advice that Marius wished he had heeded when he was first brought into the company of Les Amis. Instead, Marius’ pro-Corsican outpouring and its embarrassed reception had made him feel as though he had recklessly taken the floor at a ball, his hand at the waist of a partner he was especially keen to impress, and then, having found himself stepping to an unfamiliar air, tripped on an over-polished floor and fallen on his face, to the mingled horror and hilarity of all spectators.

He had avoided the Café Musain for weeks following the episode which Courfeyrac insisted on referring to as the shortest-lived battle of annihilation history had yet witnessed. These weeks of avoidance had by now stretched into months, but Marius in his more despondent moments could still hear Combeferre’s reproachful tone, and could still picture Enjolras staring fixedly past Marius with his hand pressed to his forehead. He only wished that any of them had been of a turn of mind to heed another line of Madame Celnart’s on the matter:

“When an unpracticed dancer makes a mistake, we may apprise him of his error; but it would be very impolite to have the air of giving him a lesson.”

-

Nevertheless, having left the hotel de la Porte-Saint-Jacques for his tenement building in the Gorbeau, and having then discovered the need to leave his tenement building with a certain urgency, Marius did not hesitate in seeking refuge with Courfeyrac again. In doing so he was conscious that, while he had rejected the assistance offered by his grandfather and delivered by his aunt, he found himself quite able to request it from Courfeyrac – perhaps because it seemed in the latter case to be offered unconditionally, in recognition of need, and not as what Marius took his grandfather’s offer to be, a claim of continued influence and ownership on him. So it was that, over three years since their first introduction, he returned to living with Courfeyrac in circumstances even more reduced than when they had first met.

Courfeyrac’s politics had been further sharpened in the move to a more insurrectionary part of town, and by lodging with him Marius had placed himself back in the orbit of radicalism, although he continued to feel like an inconvenient satellite whose trajectory could have no possible end apart from some eventual spectacular collision. He dined and drank sometimes with Courfeyrac in the vicinity of the rest of Les Amis, but made an effort to evade direct conversation or eye contact, and on one evening bolted out of the room entirely in order to avoid being asked a question by Combeferre – who, despite his solemn expression when approaching their table, had merely been about to enquire whether either of them wished to share the cost of a bottle of wine. Marius had nevertheless shot to his feet and through the side-door with such alacrity that he had overturned his chair, leaving it to hit the floor with an air of finality. It was three weeks before he could be convinced to return to Corinthe.

Courfeyrac, for his part, had privately expected that Marius would graduate, after a night or so, to sleeping in a bed of his own, or at least on the upholstered chair set just outside the bedroom, rather than continuing to sleep with only the spare mattress between himself and the cold comfort of the floor. At first this persistence had bothered Courfeyrac on Marius’ behalf rather than his own – these conditions could surely not be satisfying to any individual, even one with an outlook more Spartan than he suspected Marius’ to be. However, Courfeyrac began to be troubled on a more personal level after repeatedly coming home in the early hours, on the verge of consummating the night with a charming new acquaintance, only to discover Marius once again asleep at the foot of his bed with the attitude of an abandoned Bichon Frisé.

On one occasion, he was forced to explain Marius away as being a visiting eccentric cousin, whose religious vows of asceticism obliged him to spurn all material comforts. On more than one occasion, he had had to decide whether to tactically retreat to the lodgings of his paramour, or to move proceedings less than gallantly to the curtained alcove beside the door, and hope that Marius would not be woken by the rustle of his companion’s skirts being hitched around her waist – or indeed by anything else which might follow. In the mornings after he had opted for the latter course, the vanity of this hope was invariably demonstrated in the determined set of Marius’ jaw as he refused to broach the subject, and his deep blush and resolute nod in response to Courfeyrac’s enquiry, framed with equally resolute innocence, as to whether he had slept well.

There were other evenings, when, returning home alone and seeing Marius asleep on the mattress or over his books, his face pale and sharp with frugal living, Courfeyrac had been moved only to an inexpressible affection, and found himself kneeling to gently stroke his friend’s disarranged hair into some semblance of order before settling to sleep himself.

-

Courfeyrac concerned himself with style rather than ostentation, and was not as wedded as some of his contemporaries to the idea that to look the best one must spend the most – although the two conditions were of course apt to combine with merciless precision, meaning that the most fashionable hat in Paris was frequently also the most expensive. Still, Marius’ determination to maintain a parsimonious lifestyle, in the face of Courfeyrac’s efforts to feed and clothe him in a more substantial manner, left him nonplussed. Seeing one evening that Marius was attempting to darn the lining of his coat-pocket by candlelight for the third time that month, Courfeyrac made his habitual offer of financial assistance, and Marius, with habitual awkwardness, refused.

“Or, if not from me,” Courfeyrac ventured, “why not from your grandfather?”

Marius gave an almost violent start, as though the needle in his hand had pricked his fingertip rather than his darning, and shook his head.

“I fail as usual to fully understand you, Pontmercy. You are currently sharing with me a fairly top-end red, for which I’ve no objection to paying, and we inhabit a world so upside-down that serviceable coats can be had for less money than that. Why not accept the price of a bottle, or of a coat, from a man, Ultra or not, who will clearly not miss it?”

Marius was quiet. He had been troubled for some time by this same conundrum – or, more properly, by the question of how, if he did not allow himself to accept his grandfather’s support, could he reasonably accept Courfeyrac’s? The fact that Courfeyrac himself had now outlined the problem quite so starkly set the cap on his discomfort.

He had no option but to swallow the remainder of his mouthful of wine, but, having done so, he pushed his glass to a far corner of the table with a baleful look towards it which was, Courfeyrac noted with astonishment, almost worthy of Enjolras.

“I am perfectly capable of supporting myself, and don’t require assistance from another, relative or otherwise. And if it comes to that – de Courfeyrac – when you refuse to be defined by the status of your family, why do you insist that should I be dependent on that of mine?”

There was a moment of silence. Marius, suddenly mortified, was reminded of the exchange which had precipitated his dramatic departure from his grandfather’s house.

Courfeyrac set down his own glass, and raised an eyebrow, and Marius, looking miserably at the badly-darned coat bundled in his lap, awaited being insulted in return and then ejected from the building, which he considered to be no more than he deserved. He held his breath.

“When you have quite got this out of your system,” Courfeyrac said mildly, “come and take a drink with me at the usual table. Have no fear, I shall be glad to split the bill with you.”

-

At the corner table in Corinthe, Marius ignored the full glass that Courfeyrac set before him while he gradually unburdened himself.

“I do not, as you state, accept anything from my grandfather, and in view of this I should rightly be ashamed to accept anything from you. I am only sorry to have prevailed on your charity for so long and taken advantage of your generosity.”

Courfeyrac sighed. “Do you think I’m any more deserving of my family’s wealth than the wretch in the street? Or than yourself, who has certainly been in a condition near to that before now – what with starving until your face is paler than your shirt, and wearing your hat until it falls apart, and watering your wine not from abstemiousness but in order to make it last? At close quarters it is very nearly heartbreaking to witness.”

“There is no need to mock,” said Marius unhappily.

“I am sincere. It isn’t as though you’re forcibly expropriating my family’s estate, and obliging me to change my name to something like Egalité’. Families acquire wealth by chance or force, and not through merit. Bossuet, of course, by sheer bad fortune has lost his estate, and by sheer good fortune I have kept mine. There is no divinely-ordained place in the hierarchy to which families are entitled, and those who are pleased to find themselves in a comfortable position materially should do everything to make themselves uncomfortable at heart.”

“But I cannot in all conscience let your wealth support me, and give you nothing in exchange.”

“Not at all. I can’t give my money away quickly enough, and I long for the day when we will gain for everyone sufficient bread, land, wealth, and coats which do not give their wearers the aspect of having just come from a funeral. Until that day dawns, please accept the occasional meal and the use of my bedroom floor, and you may pay me back in whichever coin you wish, or not at all.”

He sat back in the chair, as though the matter had been settled. “And now, come with us to the dance this evening – and stay longer than you did at Sceaux. Who knows, you may even secure a girl fit to make you forget your lady of the Luxembourg for the evening.”

“That is another thing,” said Marius.

Drawing a deep breath, he explained that his horror of debt was outweighed only by his aversion to dancing, and that he felt himself both incapable and unworthy of dancing a quadrille with any woman he might encounter.

“Nor,” he concluded glumly, “can I even be sure of the right conversation to make while doing so.”

“The right conversation, indeed – while dancing a quadrille! Marius, have you been reading,” and Courfeyrac pronounced his next words with a singular and emphatic distaste, “manuals of etiquette?”

Marius looked askance and bit his lip. “I may have been.”

Enlightenment passed over Courfeyrac’s face. “So you have been basing your conduct on the rigid and restrictive ways of the Baroque ballroom? You’re no longer in your grandfather’s house, as you must be aware, and you must stop behaving as though you are there still. To know the most judicious way of knotting a cravat is one thing, but this is a matter of personal judgement – not of trimming one’s own cloth to fit a preconceived pattern. There are as many correct ways to dance as there are models of reciprocal friendship. It is only necessary to know the rules of etiquette in order to discard them.”

He got to his feet and offered Marius his arm. “Come, I shall teach you the waltz. It is the most informal and heathen of dances, which makes it naturally the most worthwhile.”

Marius stood, linked his hand with Courfeyrac’s, and, with a hesitancy that eventually gave way to assurance, let himself be led.

bycyan-013forkerrypolka <3 THANK YOU FOR SUCH A LOVELY FIC TO WORK WITH

Find Me Here
fic by sonatadream
art by @bootsssss

Cosette/Eponine