Work Text:
1. I’d been inside since Wednesday.
At first it was just another meeting. Just another day of Enjolras yelling and the world agreeing silently, without making a move to help. But then he looked around and the courtyard was full of students, law students, medical students, engineers, and workers and when Enjolras stopped talking the world was about to change.
Combeferre watches as the gates are pulled shut, as the cries against the junta grow louder, as the world outside their little Polytechnic gathers close, and joins them.
Courfeyrac puts a hand on his shoulder and pulls him into a hug before pulling away to smile at him.
“We need your help. We are trying to clear out some classrooms to sleep in, Feuilly is nearly done with the pamphlets and Joly is having a nervous breakdown over the number of people sitting on the ground.”
Combeferre cleans his glasses on his shirt and nods. There is a lot to be done if they are truly about to stay in the grounds for as long as it takes.
“Find some engineers,” he tells him. “Get them to make us a radio. We’ll need to talk to the people.”
Courfeyrac nods and disappears in the crowd.
Combeferre smiles, and he thinks that he can feel the world changing around him.
2. A summer in November
Musichetta, not being a student, wasn’t in the grounds with the rest. Instead, she stood outside, with packets of cigarettes, handing them out to the kids inside.
Bossuet finds her there soon, excited and smiling, and he leans his head on the bars and looks at her.
“Are you proud of your boys ‘Chetta?” he asks her.
She nods, not trusting herself to speak, and hands him a packet of Delphi cigarettes. She doesn’t tell him about what the radio said, how they deny this take over even happened. She hopes he can’t see her hands shaking. He kisses her once, as she was pushed against the bars by some mother crying, begging her daughter to come out.
“Joly sends his love”, he says, ignoring the world around them, “but a girl broke her leg climbing inside and he can’t come right now. He begs you not to sulk at him.”
Musichetta looks at him and his eyes are pleading so she forces herself to smile.
“Tell him I love him. And you, I love you too.”
He grins and moves to kiss her again.
Cigarette packets fall to the ground, to be picked up by protesters and students drifting around the two of them.
“Be careful,” Musichetta whispers. “Be careful or I will not speak to either of you again.”
3. Yes I was there, we didn’t want to leave.
Grantaire is painting, for the first time in months. Sitting next to Jehan, by the gate, he looks outside and paints - despite the hour, the darkness, the tear gas in the air. There is a light and that is Enjolras, strapped on the railings opposite the soldiers, the police, and then there’s darkness, anger, hate and the promise of more blood in the air. He drinks some wine and paints.
Jehan is reading something out loud next to him, in French. He tries to pay attention but the words melt into one another until all he can hear is the poet’s voice, soft but steady and reassuring despite everything. He thinks it’s a eulogy for their dead.
Enjolras is shouting to the people outside, urging them to stay with them, to support them, pleading. Grantaire paints his pleas with red and black, heroism turning monstrous, life turning into hell. The people outside are running away. The police, the army, they hit without mercy, they hit to maim and kill and through the chaos the only thing he can make out is Enjolras, calling the soldiers brothers. Outside there are screams, people crying, the sick sounds of police batons hitting flesh.
It’s a little after midnight, Saturday, the 17th. Jehan stops talking. Enjolras stops shouting. Grantaire looks up.
Death looks at the artist and death looks like tanks in the night, moving towards them.
4. No, I don’t need a bandage, this blood isn’t mine
Bahorel is bleeding, Bahorel is bruised, Bahorel is falling on the ground at the wrong side of the barricades and tries to shield his head from the blows. Nobody has shot him yet and he thinks that’s lucky. Or unlucky. Shot means dead, means no more bleeding and no more clutching your ribs and being able to count how many of them are broken.
He tries to crawl away, to get away, get back to his friends, back to anxious Joly worrying about a split lip and Combeferre, hitting his shoulder with a rolled up newspaper like he’s a dog when he tries to get up before he’s done patching him up. There is yelling, and then silence. He wonders if he’s died. But then he can hear Jehan’s voice, coming closer and closer. He opens his eyes, he tries to pull himself up. Jehan is walking towards him, and that means towards the soldiers, the tanks, unarmed, still holding his bloody poetry book like a safety blanket, like a shield, like an anchor.
He screams at him but Jehan just smiles. Smiles like they’re not going to shoot him in less than a minute, like he didn’t just sign his own execution. He wants to move but his body isn’t obeying, he wants to move but he’s bleeding out on the pavement, useless.
“My brother,” he says to the sergeant and Bahorel needs to get up, get up so he can punch him for trying to find reason and sentiment in animals. “My brother, you won’t shoot me. I have no weapons, I am not a threat. I am just coming to get my friend.”
The soldiers stop. Their sergeant speaks - but Bahorel’s too dizzy to focus on him, lying with his mouth tasting of blood and concrete, and he looks at Jehan as his vision blurs.
Go away, he thinks, go away go away go away.
“Down with the Junta!” Jehan yells. “Today fascism-“
He closes his eyes as Jehan falls.
5. Hands tied on the railings, faces and signs
Every sound seems to stop when Enjolras’ speech falters and he knows that they know, all that are with him in there, they know. The tanks have surrounded the grounds, their makeshift hospital is filled with people, and more stumble there by the minute. They know. Now they just have to tell the world, and hope against all reason that it will make a difference.
He screams, to make up for his silence: Don’t be afraid of the tanks!
The people of Athens are sleeping, scared away by the gas and the police and the deaths. He doesn’t know how many have died since that afternoon. The tanks are moving closer and he keeps shouting, waiting for someone to listen. The girl that took up his place operating their radio station is shouting with him, her voice terrified, nearly a scream.
Good. Wake the whole world up. If we hold out till morning we are saved.
Brothers, we are unarmed! Don’t shoot us!
He doesn’t know how many have died, there wasn’t time to learn. He looks at the tanks as he cries out and thinks he sees Bahorel, on the ground outside the gates, but the night is dark, and his eyes are blurry with tears. He sees a figure - thinks it’s Jehan, jumping out from over the gate and moving towards the police.
The tanks stop. The sergeant raises his arm in greeting.
Enjolras laughs, joyful and cries, his voice hoarse but happy.
They will not hit us, the army is with us.
Their hearts are ours my friends and the soldiers are our brothers
They will not shoot.
Someone gives the order. The figure falls, whoever they were. Dead.
The tanks are moving towards the doors.
He is crying but he needs to be heard, now more than ever:
Brothers, we are unarmed! Don’t shoot us!
A boy narrates
“What were your friends called?”
“I already told you, Enjolras, Combeferre, Courfeyrac…”
“What were their real names?”
“Joly, Bossuet, Bahorel, Feuilly…”
“Were you even really there boy? Stop wasting our time.”
“Jean Prouvaire, call him Jehan and Grantaire, call him R or call him nothing at all. I was there since Wednesday when they closed the doors, they let me stay and help, with the radio, and then when the tanks came and we got out”
“You got out.”
“I got out. Not them. Combeferre was giving orders after the negotiations he said ‘Line up and walk out without a fuss’ and Grantaire – he must have been drunk- he saluted and said ‘but aren’t we fighting against fascism here’ and then Enjolras hit him and I looked away because he was crying and Enjolras looked like a wreck. Combeferre lifted Grantaire up again and put a hand on Enjolras’ shoulder and Enjolras sighed and looked at me and said ‘Get out and we will follow’ and I did.”
“But they didn’t? How many stayed inside, how many dead?”
“It didn’t matter. The police, they were waiting, in plain clothes. We got out and they shot us, and they pulled bags over our heads and pulled us away in cars, in vans, and I”
“You ran.”
“Stumbled. There was an old man, he carried me, he had a basement.”
“His name?”
“Fauchevelent”
“His real name?”
“I don’t know. It isn’t safe to know things like that, the man made me swear not to try and find him. Can I have a cigarette? Please can I go? My Cosette, she’s outside. Please sir, can I? I was there sir, can I go now?”
“What of your friends?”
“We stepped over the dead, the dead they were everywhere and then they put them in vans they pulled a bag over their heads and Courfeyrac was asking a policeman for his hat and then they shot him and Feuilly, Feuilly was screaming and they shot her too, on the belly, and then the hit her on the head and tossed her in the van.”
“What was her real name?”
“Feuilly, she was very pretty, her mother was from Poland and she worked at the shop across the street. She brought us sleeping bags.”
“There was no report of any person like that missing. Marios, maybe you were mistaken.”
“They shot her, just like they shot Courfeyrac and their blood was everywhere, all of the dead, so many dead. He looked at me, before they shot him; he looked at me and then-”
“Marios I understand how you must be feeling but there is no mention of a Courfeyrac in our lists of missing students. Tell us his real name and we will help you find your friends again. Less than twenty people died in the attack, your friends are probably out there still. Tell us their names.”
You look up at the sergeant for the first time since you came in his office. He is thin, with dark circles under his eyes, and he looks exhausted, but you can’t make yourself feel sorry for him. Not now. You try to remember the last time you got some sleep. Wednesday, probably, when the world still looked like something worth fighting for. Wednesday, when you walked into the classroom-turned-bedroom and Courfeyrac was sitting there, smiling at you from the desk he had claimed as his bed. ‘Pontmercy,’ he had said, ‘I do hope that you’ve come to sleep with me.’ And you laughed and laid down next to him, on a desk, in a second hand sleeping bag that smelled like smoke and beer.
The sergeant is not your friend. The policemen are not your allies against injustice. They are not looking for survivors but scapegoats, and if it weren’t for your grandfather’s influence you would be facing the court right now.
You look at him and tell him the truth, knowing that he will not believe you. The truth that doesn’t match with the news, or the reports, or anything that he’s been told.
“Officer, all of my friends are dead.”