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Revolution, Enjolras says, very firmly. Revolution is the blood of men. Revolution is the fruit of love.
Well, you say, and you go back to sleep as you are not a man and you are not in love. All the men are ramming rods down their guns. Someone pins a square of cloth on top of your shoulders so the light can catch the stitching better. Someone else picks the threads out until it is all unravelling over you and they have to separate flax from your hair. Enjolras walks over with her note-book snapped shut and stands next to your form for too long - she hates how you look when you pass out.
Eventually, Combeferre takes her away to look at their stores. They tally and disagree and tally some more. Enjolras puts on her coat and goes out into the snapping cold of night. She traces all her old routes and the new ones. She goes to her rooms to fetch the last maps, leaves the bed unmade. Your clothes are on her sheets. She thinks about your teeth against hers.
She runs all the way back but can’t feel winded at all. She comes in and you are still there. She puts her head down next to you on the table. She wishes she cared more.
When you wake up you have to close your eyes again. Everything that was indeterminate by night is blinding by day. You put your hand up so you can touch your skin. Everyone has left. You get up and smell the lightning in the air. You reach out to find your bottle empty. You shiver. You feel, impossibly, betrayed.
Enjolras leads her party back to home ground on feet. They storm the streets and take up arms near the erected barricade. Coureyfrac drags you out of your gutter. He makes to give you a carbine but stops when he sees how your hands shake. He knows better than to think you are scared. He blinks, asks if you want to take first shift. You tell him no. He lets go of your arm and turns away to do something meaningless and heroic. You lean against a piano with its legs knocked out. You touch your neck just to feel more alive. Feel the snare, the kick-on beat. Enjolras says: This is all insignificant in the long run. Your lips and my lips and the gap between, which is really no gap at all. Your feelings could level seas. This is insignificant in the long run.
You say: I know. You say: I’ll never leave. You say: I’m sorry. Enjolras turns so her face is sliced through with light. Come dusk and it will be sliced through with something else. This is how it has always been.
Man the barricades, she says, and loads her gun. What she really means, you’ll never know. You’ll never understand. She could say jump and you would jump. She could say bite and you would bite. She could say believe and you would believe, your hair plastered to your neck in the downpour. Watching, waiting. Gnawing yourself down to the bone. Musichetta took one look at you that night you came down to the café and then looked away, her lovely eyes bowing into crescents, her small hand closing around your wrist. She says: How did it feel, when her eyes lit up and some of the liquid fire was for you. How was it like, when she came in - in the dark - and sat down and put your mouths together, side to side. Splayed and flayed, the loveless artifice coming alive in streaks of gold. How you cried yourself to sleep - still in the dark - beside the hearth, your lashes flecked with coal.
Now, again, how she sings and cries and sings some more. Gunshots like lightning bursts. Your head against the wall. Back up, fling wide. Dive for cover. All the men could be hitting the ground but you are hitting the ground running. This is how it has always been, your breath coming faster and your hems torn. All around you a new empire being wrought. The cross-stitch and the damp gunpowder. All your hopes wrung hoarse. All the skies in all the nights sliding away. All the red thread falling onto your shoulders, and if you woke up you would laugh at how soft it was. If you woke up you would know.
Let’s say you woke up, upstairs, the floorboards broken by slim muzzles. Blinking once, twice and never again because you don’t dare to make this disappear, too; the girl of your dreams by the window.
Say it’s love it’s not love, say it’s destiny it’s not destiny. Say it’s a chance and it just might be - your hand reaching for hers in the strong sun.
Well, Enjolras seems to say. You take her fingers between yours. In the end revolution is blood and fruit and love and then, very lonely indeed. What she said at the barricades, you’ll never know again. You’ll never know.