Chapter Text
June-July 1832
When Lucien Combeferre lets his eyes close, he is lying on the ground with a bayonet wound in his thigh and a shattered shoulder.
When Combeferre wakes, he is in his own bed, not in his rooms but home. His father is sitting beside him, reading, waiting. He doesn’t know how he got here; he supposes he should be glad he’s not dead. It can’t have been more than a few days since the barricade fell. The barricade must have fallen, since he is home.
“Good morning,” says the elder Combeferre. His son is alive, and he is glad for that. “It is the twentieth of June, eleven o’clock in the morning.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.” His father stands up and bends down to kiss his forehead, a thing he hasn’t done since Combeferre was a small child. “Thank whoever it was who brought you to safety. I myself do not know how it happened. But Giles says that some strange man brought you to his surgery and said he had found you unconscious. I don’t know how he knew who you were, perhaps he found a letter. But you are here now.”
“I did have a letter from Giles in my coat pocket. Where is it?” Combeferre looks around, but everything is still hard to see. His eyes want to close again.
“It is safe, don’t worry.”
“Good. I must write to my friends, see if any of them are alive…”
“Later. You are in no state to write.”
“You could write for me.”
“If you are not too tired to dictate, Lucien. You need rest.”
“I need to write, I need to know if—”
“Shh, shh, calm yourself. It has not even been two weeks since.”
“Two weeks seems far too short.”
“Well, think over what it is you want to say. I will be back.” And with a gentle push to Combeferre’s uninjured shoulder, he leaves. He returns twenty or so minutes later with the writing-case Combeferre knows well and sits down again in the bedside chair.
Several hours follow in which Combeferre speaks, seeing the faces of his friends before him, tracing the shapes of their names in the air. He signs his own name to every letter, hands weak and shaky. It is a hardly readable scrawl in contrast to his father’s fine copperplate, but at least they will know he is alive; none of the letters are long enough to need a second page. He has more to say to everyone, but those are the sort of words that come with long embraces and clasped hands, not when they cannot touch each other. There are two copies of each letter, as there are two different possible addresses for each man. It’s heading towards late afternoon when all the letters have been written, signed, sealed, and sent off to the post.
Combeferre goes to sleep early that night, after being fed and read to by his father. Jean-Baptiste strokes his son’s dark curls back from his forehead, tucks his own graying ones back, and reluctantly leaves. It is a hard night for both of them. Twenty-six years earlier, Jean-Baptiste Combeferre had married Louise Dumartin. She had died the twenty-first of June, 1822, when his eldest son who now lay in his childhood bedroom wounded had been but fifteen.
The younger Combeferre dreams of another night, just over two weeks before. Jehan Prouvaire has again been taken prisoner. He is again about to go and offer to exchange prisoners; he is again too late. A voice which he knows well and will never hear alive again shouts “Vive l’avenir!” The shots ring out in his ears as they did that night, and Combeferre wakes, shaking, panting, straining for breath, He coughs sharply, and it sounds even louder in the quiet of the house. It reminds him of the gunshot that had knocked him down, shattered his shoulder, sent him sprawling onto his face against the street, leg twisted awkwardly under him, spectacles knocked half off his face. He hadn’t had the strength to push himself up with one good arm and leg only, so he’d lain there waiting for he knew not what. To join Jehan and Bahorel, maybe.
He turns over a name in his head. Amélie Prouvaire. Jehan had spoken of her often; his younger sister, yet so like him that they were often mistaken for twins. Combeferre had written to her, even though she most likely knew by now of her brother’s death; it would do them both good to have company in their grief.
He stares at the ceiling, willing himself to go back to sleep. It doesn’t work; he lies there awake, alone, until the dawn comes, a summer morning full of promise.
Days pass, a week passes, and then almost before he knows it July has come, with still no word from anyone. Until one day there are three letters for him. Only three when he had sent so many. The others may come later, he thinks.
One of the three is in Courfeyrac’s familiar comfortable scrawl, as cheerful as he himself, and is dated the twenty-ninth of June.
Mon cher Combeferre, his father reads, and smiles before handing it to him. “Read it yourself,” he says.
Combeferre reads it slowly, savoring every word. It is almost too good to be true, that Courfeyrac is alive and able to write. Yet it is true, by the letter he holds in his hands. Courfeyrac is alive, on the road to recovery (though he will never be able to walk as well again), and will come to visit as soon as he is able.
There is a second letter from Courfeyrac, dated the day after, and it is full of grief and love and worry and pain and such immense relief that Combeferre is living and free. It is tear-stained and blotted, and Combeferre holds it to his chest before tucking it away in the drawer where he keeps such things. There will be more of such words later, when Courfeyrac comes. Both letters were sent from his parents’ house, which is not too far for a convalescent to travel, so he hopes it will be soon.
The third letter is actually three in one, from Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta, and Combeferre nearly cries with joy that they are all safe and well. They have news, he reads, to tell him should he return to Paris, news of Enjolras, and he vows he will return with Courfeyrac when they are both able. He has been up and about for about a week now, but he is very tired still, and walking is hard, and his shoulder is not fully healed, so mostly he sits outside in the garden, with a book and his thoughts.
Joly writes that he misses their talks, Bossuet writes that he misses his steady presence, and Musichetta writes that she would like to know him better. Combeferre smiles and determines to reply later, when he has thought out what he wants to say. That evening, after a day spent talking with his father in the garden, leaning on him when he needs to, he writes a long and loving reply, among other things assuring them that he will come and that he will bring Courfeyrac with him.
The next day it is raining. He can’t go into the garden, so he sits in a window seat instead, with the Nichomachean Ethics and the notebook he has with him always. It’s a quiet gray day, the sound of the rain is comforting, and even when it turns to a thunderstorm he is content. The elder Combeferre brings him tea and sits with him for a time in the afternoon. They don’t talk, they sit there together doing their own separate things, and it is quiet and peaceful and comfortable.
In the evening, two visitors come, one leaning on the other and on his cane, borrowed hat slightly too large for him, brown wavy hair tousled and scraggly, face paler than it should be, making his freckles stand out. He looks up from watching his feet when Combeferre answers the door and launches himself at the other man, heedless of their injuries. He whirls him around in an embrace that makes Combeferre wince at the strain to his shoulder. “Courfeyrac!”
“And good evening to you too, mon cher. Did I not say I would come as soon as I could?”
“He slept most of the way,” says the other man, standing in the doorway, who bears a resemblance to him. “Henri de Courfeyrac. His brother.” He extends his hand after the two others let go of each other (they keep their arms slung around each other; they have been too long apart).
“Lucien Combeferre.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you at last,” half-smiles de Courfeyrac in an expression that is so very like his brother’s.
“Likewise.” Combeferre vaguely remembers Courfeyrac telling him of the only member of his family who hadn’t stopped talking to him after he left. “Come in, come in, get yourselves dry. Summer thunderstorms are nasty beasts but mostly toothless.” They follow him to the library-cum-sitting room, and he leaves them there and goes to fetch his father. He has been working in his study, but he stretches slowly and accompanies his son back to their visitors. “This is my father, Jean-Baptiste Combeferre,” he says.
“You have a most excellent son, Monsieur,” grins Courfeyrac, shaking his hand.
“I agree.” He smiles and sits down in his usual chair. “Did you two have a good journey?”
“We did.”
“Pierre, you slept throughout quite a lot of it,” Henri laughs.
“And so? It was still a good journey.”
“You did need rest, you still do.”
“I need to talk to my friend here,” Courfeyrac gestures vaguely at Combeferre.
“I know.” Jean-Baptiste and Henri seeing that they have no place in the conversation that will unfold take themselves off to another corner of the room and have their own.
This time, it is Combeferre who embraces Courfeyrac first, and they sit there like that, in the same chair, heads together, just quietly feeling the weight of each other’s absence fade away. They never want to be separated from each other again.
The talking comes eventually, the talking and the tears and the countless do you remembers. Do you remember when we met, do you remember Jehan’s poem before it all went to hell, do you remember Bahorel’s laugh, do you remember Enjolras scorching his feet by the fire in winter, do you remember Feuilly’s passion and fire, do you remember Bossuet’s terrible jokes, do you remember Joly’s endless good humor… It goes on and on, and they suspect it will never really end. They talk of gravestones and funerals; those who died have probably been claimed by their families or by other friends, but they must find them. They do not talk of the barricade very much; the wounds are too fresh, the holes too new. They weep instead. Combeferre tells Courfeyrac of what Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta had written, and he agrees that they must visit soon.
“Of course. It would not do to leave them alone, and this news…”
“Don’t have too much hope. There are still four of us living, at least. If not more.”
“And why should we not hope for Enjolras to be alive as well?” Combeferre turns his head away and shakes it, but Courfeyrac takes a hold of his arm and gently coaxes him to face him again. “Do you remember how that poem went again?”
“Jehan’s? We were just now speaking of it.”
“Lorsqu’en ajoutant votre âge à mon âge, / Nous ne comptions pas à deux quarante ans,” he quotes softly, tearfully, remembering. “Do you remember?”
Combeferre does remember when they were scarcely more than boys, with their hearts as one, and he says as much, burying his face in Courfeyrac’s shoulder, weeping bitterly.
“It will always be us three, as it was in those days before we met Prouvaire and Bahorel and Feuilly and the rest. We will always have each other, you and Enjolras and I. That is why I have hope that he lives, Combeferre.”
He nods slowly and begins to quote something else. “Et Jehan, le bon Provençal, / Qui les gardes ont abattu á Paris; / Où est-il, Vierge souveraine? / Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!”
“To change Villon—”
“Did not he himsef change his quotes to suit the times?”
Courfeyrac nods and picks up from where his friend left off. “Prince, n'enquerez de sepmaine / Où ils sont, / ne de cest an, / Qu'à ce refrain ne vous remaine: / Mais où sont les neiges d'antan!”
The rest of the evening goes much the same way, talking together of the past and the future. They go to bed early, Courfeyrac on a spare mattress; he was offered the other guest room but turned it down to stay with Combeferre. It is a quiet and peaceful night; the two friends are together again.