wings_of_a_swan | In which there is a bit of quiet time

In which there is a bit of quiet time

Enjolras is in room number 89, which seems appropriate.

The room itself is decorated, or rather not decorated, in much the same way that Enjolras's rooms in Paris were. Though with rather fewer candles. And no stove, yet it's a perfectly comfortable temperature--is it spring or summer here? Is it always spring or summer here?

Combeferre takes in the window, the books scattered here and there, the walls bare except for the Declaration of the Rights of Man--and a flag. A red flag, with holes and stains that could only be blood.

The barricade's flag.

Combeferre blinks hard, and looks away. If he weeps now, it won't be quiet sobs and tears, but the sort of howls that would frighten the neighbors, if there are neighbors. And if they are capable of emotions like fear.

He turns to see Enjolras looking at him. He suspects Enjolras is worried. Combeferre wants to reassure him, but it's not so easy to think of how.

"There's nothing to be concerned about, my friend," Combeferre finally says, knowing it's not his best effort. "After all," he adds drily, "we're both dead. What more can happen?"

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Feuilly and Prouvaire. He sees Feuilly's face, alight with enthusiasm, and then bitter with betrayal. He hears Prouvaire's voice ringing out before the gunshots silenced him. Why wouldn't they be here? This place cannot be hell, Combeferre has concluded. So it's not that they're undeserving of punishment, though they both assuredly are. Then why, when they died alongside their friends, wouldn't they share the same afterlife?

Well, Prouvaire died separately--but that evidently didn't stop Bahorel from turning up. And Feuilly had died in the same onrush of soldiers that had felled Joly and Bossuet.

Whatever the reason, and Combeferre is certainly not going to stop pondering that, he won't see them, at least not soon.

But--Courfeyrac. Combeferre will see Courfeyrac again, and that thought is like a ray of sun. And Joly, and Bossuet and Bahorel, and Grantaire. He will see them again. His last memories of them won't be of them mired in carnage.

Or, in Grantaire's case, drunk and unconscious at a table. "Yes--I met Gavroche, and he told me some of this." It's only when he hears it from Enjolras, though, that it begins to sink in as truth. "As well as some other, stranger tales." But the question of necromancers can wait for another time. "Are they nearby? I need hardly say I wish to find them, and soon."

Combeferre's voice cracks on "soon." But then he has to interrupt himself for a massive yawn.

He continues, however. "I suppose Grantaire didn't manage to escape the Guard, then?"

Combeferre's stomach twists as he speaks. Grantaire didn't deserve such an end, gunned down as an afterthought because he was too drunk to get out in time.

Enjoras's brief silence, his gaze for the moment cast down, may well be read as confirmation.

Until he lifts his eyes to Combeferre's, and speaks. "Perhaps he could have. But no. He stood up at the end to be shot with me. He chose to die as one of us, with 'Vive la Revolution' on his lips."

Perhaps Grantaire couldn't have escaped. But it doesn't matter; he never thought to try.

"He died by your side?" Combeferre is stunned, and yet not. The thing makes a kind of sense, partly for reasons Enjolras would prefer not to acknowledge.

Combeferre can't help feeling a certain joy, despite hearing that Grantaire did indeed die a bloody death (and would Grantaire have preferred living after they all perished? Evidently not). Rousing himself to stand with Enjolras must have been a triumph of all that was best and most beloved in Grantaire. "It will be so good to see him again."

Unfortunately, he inadvertently punctuates this with another yawn, and remembers it has been more than a day since he last slept.

"Yes."

There's a light in Enjolras's gaze too, and a small smile just touching his mouth. Grantaire was his friend only in a complicated way; a gulf stood between them, composed of mockery and incomprehension and other things Enjolras prefers not to name, bridged by mutual friends and by hope and by habit; to a large extent, that remains true even now. And yet there's another bridge as well. This is the pride of stubborn hope vindicated, and of another's courage acknowledged.

His face softens, a moment later, as he looks at Combeferre. The man is very nearly swaying on his feet; he's as comprehensively fatigued as Enjolras has ever seen him. "I should have gotten you a nightshirt instead."

Well, it won't be the first time one of them has had cause to borrow a nightshirt along with a bed. He touches Combeferre's shoulder again, lightly. "The others' rooms are nearby. I can send them a message to come, if you'd like. But I think perhaps you should sleep first. They'll all understand."

No, Combeferre wants to say, bring them here now, this instant, or I'll go pound on their doors, but I must see them at once, see them breathing and whole.

When he starts to say that, though, it ends up coming out as "Noawrmmmph." He cuts off the yawn, but he knows Enjolras must have noticed. And in truth perhaps it would be better to see his friends when he can converse with them instead of just yawning at them and then falling asleep on someone's shoulder.

"You might be right." It's a grudging admission. To know Courfeyrac is right there and not to see him, after watching him fall, is painfully absurd.

He understands the impatience entirely. In Combeferre's place he would be burning with it. And what an absurd thing, that hunger and fatigue and bodily limits would follow one past death -- and yet it seems they do, at least in this peculiar afterlife.

Enjolras has never bowed easily to his own bodily limits. They frustrate him deeply, when he lets them, though he has great patience with those of others. Combeferre is the same. It's a pitfall they both know well, in themselves and in each other.

"They'll all understand," he says again, gently, and his grip tightens slightly on Combeferre's shoulder. It's all he says; this decision must be Combeferre's.

Of course they will, which doesn't change anything.

"A nap," Combeferre finally says. "Will you promise to wake me in two hours?"

Two hours, he judges, should be more than enough to render him minimally coherent once more.

"Of course."

Two hours: the sleep Enjolras advised and neither of them took at the barricade. Just last night, for Combeferre.

It's a practical compromise, an amount between need and desire.

Edited 2014-12-12 20:17 (UTC)

The significance of two hours doesn't escape Combeferre. He remembers how each of them spent those final sleepless hours, the vigilance and the tension and the quiet. Remembers Feuilly, painstakingly carving his heart's final cry into cold uncaring stone.

Combeferre looks down at his clothes. He's willing enough to sleep in them, but perhaps it would be better to change. "Do you have a spare nightshirt?"

"Yes."

He fetches one from the drawer, hands it over. But--

"Combeferre." This is gentle again, but differently. Instead of a friend's compassionate concern -- though that remains -- his voice now has the tenor of a hymn, hushed under the vault of the sunlight sky. "Listen. France will establish a republic. It's a longer and harder road than we dreamed of, but still, at the end is a true republic, one that lasts. Universal suffrage, compulsory education, clean water, medical care available to all with governmental underwriting. The national motto once again Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, oak and fasces on its coat of arms in a grand parliament of nations. And not only France: republics will spread across Europe -- across the world. Even Poland, even Greece." Eventually. But it's not the road there, the deaths and betrayals and conquerors and partitions he's speaking of now: it's what was won at the end of the road, and the achievements that were only fierce dreams while they lived.

"I'm not speaking only of belief, my friend. People come to Milliways from all worlds; there's a library, vaster than anything you've seen. I read of the French Republic in a history book. Set down as accomplished fact, its continuation taken for granted. The rights of all humanity seen as an inevitability."

Edited 2014-12-12 20:44 (UTC)

Combeferre's fingers tighten on the nightshirt, and he looks at Enjolras with a sudden wild grin.

It's not that he doubted this, ever, but to hear it confirmed, confirmed from Enjolras as a known fact--

"You know this? You've heard it from people from our world?" That 'all worlds' is intriguing, and is filed away for future inquiry.

Bossuet had spoken of people who had ready access to clean water, of people with much greater scientific knowledge, who could work miracles of health and healing, and that had been thrill enough for Combeferre to hear. But Bossuet had been, of necessity, frustratingly vague about many things, able only to say that he had encountered versions of Enjolras and Courfeyrac from 1832, and that they had told him of future pitfalls the Amis would encounter in their 1832 effort, and of ways to prevent cholera.

"There is proof?"

Take me to the books, he wants to say, if not my friends, then at least the papers and the documents that will show me what you speak of. He doesn't doubt Enjolras for a second, but he wants to see, and for a moment he feels almost awake again.

Edited 2014-12-12 21:08 (UTC)

Enjolras makes a small gesture, not negation but qualification, even as his own quieter joy shows in response.

"Books. From people, it's harder to say -- I've heard similar from some, but it's hard to say who's from our world, and who from another Earth, merely similar. Though it's heartening to know that, as well. But I asked for a book of the history of my own France, to be certain. The Bar -- it's a fantastic mechanism, I don't understand it in the least but it's been reliable -- it assured me that the provenance was correct."

There were horrors in that book. Many of them he grieves still, even from this distance of decades and death.

But to know this -- to know this, to be able to tell it to his friends, to think of what it means for France and for humanity -- it's worth any price he could ever have paid.

Combeferre is still grinning.

Oh, he knows there are likely horrors in France's future--in the world's future--that nothing valuable comes cheap or easy, and that every great triumph is bought with suffering.

But to know that the triumphs will come, that the suffering isn't in vain or unceasing, that a world of greater freedom and greater justice is not only achievable but achieved--that brings a lightness to him that was unimaginable since even before the first shot fired on the barricade, a lightness that perhaps he's never felt before.

Combeferre has always had faith, he has always had hope, he has always known that possibilities were wide open and trusted to humanity to realize them.

But he is a scientist. Faith, hope, possibility, trust--none of these things can measure up in his mind to knowledge. And now he knows. Or at least, Enjolras swears he can and will know, that the knowledge is at hand, and that's very nearly as good.

"My friend," he says, and then stops. There's no adequate response he can make to what Enjolras has told him. "I may actually sleep well now."

He takes the nightshirt, turns to shed his clothes and put it on, slips into the bed and, much-battered by horrors and wonders both, falls immediately asleep.

Enjolras lights a candle at the desk. He turns down the room's nearly heatless lamps with the little switch on the wall: dimming them, then extinguishing them entirely. He sits down to amend his messages to Joly and Bossuet and Bahorel and Grantaire, to write a second note to Courfeyrac. His movements are quiet and efficient.

But there's a glow of contentment in his face; a small and perhaps unconscious smile sometimes rises. When he folds the notes and rises, he pauses long enough to glance at Combeferre -- another dear friend here at last, limp not in death but in peaceful sleep -- before he goes to the door with the intent of slipping quietly out to find a rat messenger.

He will not have the opportunity, or in the case of one recipient, the need.

Courfeyrac had been in the library when the rat found him, which is why there are three random books haphazardly under his arm. He is out of breath and panting, wide-eyed with a grin plastered all over his face.

'He is here? It is true?'

Of course it is true. The note came from Enjolras.

None of them would joke about something like this, but it's true that Enjolras hardly jokes in general.

He meets Courfeyrac's eyes with his own rare, bright smile.

"Come in quietly. He's already asleep."

Of course Courfeyrac will want to see. And Combeferre is very likely too soundly asleep already to wake even for a friend's arrival, to judge by how instantly sleep claimed him; but, if not, he'll want to wake and see Courfeyrac bright-eyed and whole. There's no reason at all for them to whisper out in a hallway.

Courfeyrac passes into the room at once, clasping Enjolras' shoulder as he does. And yes, there he is. Combeferre. Much as he loves all his friends, he has missed Combeferre - the man is so different from him, his company is an entirely different pleasure from those who have more similar tastes to his own.

He looks at him sleeping for a moment - yes, he is really here, it is really him - and then turns to Enjolras with a grin.

'I knew he would come eventually. And now only two remain.'

And Marius. He would dearly like to see Marius.

'How is he?'

Enjolras remained in the hall only long enough to pass the notes to a rat. Each has the recipient's name on the outside, and a brief message inside: that Combeferre is here, that he's sleeping now but in a couple of hours please come by.

(Habit still keeps him cautious about committing much to written notes, especially in a place where a living Javert can be found. But there's about Combeferre's arrival that's a secret; the broad facts will be obvious to anyone who saw his arrival, anyone who meets him and already knows his friends.)

He returns, closing the door behind him with a quiet click as Courfeyrac turns to grin and comment.

"Exhausted." Well, of course. Courfeyrac will remember as well as he the barricade: the Combeferre they saw then is only a little while removed from the Combeferre asleep now.

"He hasn't been here long, so we haven't discussed a great deal. I've told him who's here, what he missed, and the good news from the library here."

The good news worthy of being mentioned in an exhausted man's first hour at Milliways is, of course, patently obvious. Just mentioning it, still, makes Enjolras's face glow slightly in the candle's warm light.

Edited 2014-12-14 21:39 (UTC)

It is news entirely worthy of being mentioned the instant a dead man arrives, and Courfeyrac's grin broadens at the look on Enjolras's face. Because yes, it is wondrous to be dead and still be able to learn these things.

'Good. Yes, very good. He should know.'

They should all know. If only everyone who died there that day could learn it; that it was not for nothing, that they will get there in the end.

He turns back to Combeferre, and is silent for a moment. Then;

'Enjolras? Do you think Jehan will be prevented from coming, because he was not with the rest of us when he died? Do you think that's how it works?'

"No. I don't."

He speaks quietly, but with assurance.

He's spent enough time turning over hypotheses, especially in the months before the others arrived. There's little enough data to support any of them, and no satisfactory answers; still, logic can be applied. (At times, it felt there was little else to do but apply logic to such questions without data.)

"Bahorel is here. Gavroche is here. Grantaire and I were not with the rest of you -- but he arrived months before I did, though we died in the same moment. Fauchelevent and the spy are both here -- and alive! -- and neither of them died with us. Other men we knew less well died alongside the rest of us, and in the same breath, and have not come."

"More and more of us who loved each other as well as brothers have come. I don't know if that's some underlying pattern, some recognition of love on the part of the universe, or if there's another pattern we haven't yet grasped. But I see no reason to believe that dying a street away, with us on his mind and him certainly on ours, would be any barrier."

'Yes. Yes of course, you're right.'

Courfeyrac is not much given to maudlin introspection, but being here, and being dead, and not knowing whether they will all be together again - it makes a man think. He's sure if they could just all be here, then things would be even more enjoyable and he would certainly not have to give his death any more thought at all.

He steps back from the bed so as not to wake Combeferre - though a book does slip from under his arm, and make a thunk - and runs a hand through his messy curls.

'Well. I will stay until he wakes. Or...no, perhaps I would disturb him. I should return these books perhaps. And fetch wine for later.'

There must certainly be a celebration.

Combeferre is running to the soldier again, his shoes slipping in gore. When the first bayonet thrusts into him, he shouts but keeps moving, and then he hears a thunk right beside him, right where Courfeyrac should be, and he doesn't want to look. He doesn't want to see Courfeyrac fallen--

--and then he hears Courfeyrac talking cheerily of wine, and he turns around and sits up with an "Eh?"

He's in a bed. Enjolras's bed, in this strange afterlife--Milliways. He is dead.

He looks around the room and sees Enjolras--dead, too, but seemingly otherwise. And facing Enjolras is Courfeyrac, unhurt and smiling.

Combeferre shoves off the blankets and stumbles out of bed.

Edited 2014-12-15 00:24 (UTC)

Enjolras is smiling again, now, bright with private joy. He can't regret this waking, no matter how exhausted Combeferre was, no matter that he was the one who advised sleep. Not with the look on Combeferre's face, and the look on Courfeyrac's.

He takes half a step back, only enough to clear the way for these two to greet each other properly.

Courfeyrac's response is predictable. He barely lets Combeferre get to his feet before he is flinging his arms around him, books clattering to the floor forgotten.

'My friend.'

His voice is thick with emotion, but he will wager the others care about as much as he does.

'It is good to see you.'

Oh, Combeferre cares immensely. Hearing that frank warmth and passion in Courfeyrac's voice again nearly makes up for the heartbreak of the past days.

Combeferre rests his head on Courfeyrac's shoulder, holding him close, before stepping back to say, "This is a gift I didn't dare hope for. The three of us--nearly all of us--together again, and well."

As well as the dead can be, anyway, but that's not troubling Combeferre right now. He's smiling as widely as when Enjolras told him that France and much of the world would indeed gain their freedom.

Edited 2014-12-16 01:17 (UTC)

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