Chapter Text
Marius cradled the back of his head in one hand and stared at the ceiling. There was an insect stuck to it, just at the edge of the largest stain. It was not stuck to a spiderweb; it had not been smashed; it appeared to have dragged itself halfway across the plaster as a thirsty man drags himself across the desert, stretched its hairy forelegs toward the window, and died. It appeared to be some sort of fly. Marius wondered if it was an omen.
Through the thin door of his room, he could hear Courfeyrac entertaining a girl. He was always entertaining someone. Marius, having lived with him for two years, had learned to tune out the noises.
It was only laughter today, watered-down brightness disappearing into the grey sponge of the sky. If Courfeyrac kept her laughing, though, there would soon be muffled groans, the sound of a headboard striking the wall. The sounds themselves did not bother Marius— he accepted them as he accepted birdsong, or the sound of carts on the street below— but afterward, if he happened to catch Courfeyrac in the hall, with mussed hair and a grin cutting dimples into flushed cheeks, Marius would remember how he had sounded. He could not stop himself from remembering it. Courfeyrac was shameless, and so, out of respect for common dignity, Marius was forced to take on his shame.
Not that it mattered much, this drop in the bucket. Marius found shame elsewhere when offered none by Courfeyrac. He felt, for example, that at that moment, he should have been studying in the library; however, had he gone to the library, he would have said to himself sternly that he never went anywhere else, and that this was why he had no friends. If he had gone somewhere else, it would have occurred to him that he should go home and write to his mother. If he had gone home and written, the letter would have been unsatisfactory, and he would condemn himself again as an ingrate and a disappointment.
To lie on the dusty boards, stare at a dead fly on the ceiling, and agonize— that was the path of least resistance. And so he never went anywhere unless Courfeyrac dragged him, which Courfeyrac inevitably did.
Footsteps in the hall. Giggling outside Marius' door as Courfeyrac's opened and shut. Marius closed his eyes and waited. A few minutes later, as he had known they would, the bed springs began to creak.
Courfeyrac was taking him somewhere new tonight. Marius turned onto his side, away from the door, and tried to remember the name of the place— the Morein, no, the Musain— a café where young men met to discuss politics. It would be good, Marius thought, to have something specific to talk about. Usually he couldn't think of a single thing to say, but he had many good thoughts on the reforms of the Czar.
He had shut the window against the persistent late-March cold, but the sounds of the street were never fully drowned out. Intermingling with the creaks from across the hall were wooden wheels and horses' hooves striking cobblestones, the barked orders of a policeman directing traffic, people calling out greetings that echoed in the square. He tried to pick these sounds out, focus on these, but in the same way it is difficult to tear one's eyes from a burning building, his mind returned again and again to Courfeyrac. The girl's noises were softer; they were easy to ignore, but Courfeyrac's voice had always demanded attention. Though Marius knew these sounds by heart— or perhaps because he did— he could not help retracing them over the minutes. The mind seeks what it recognizes. Water follows paths it has already eroded.
At last Courfeyrac cried out, and Marius squeezed his eyes shut, knowing it was over. He tried not to, but he wondered what happened once the audible part ended— if the quiet afterward was Courfeyrac and the girl getting dressed, or talking in low voices, or lying silently, intertwined. He counted the minutes it took for the door to creak open and footsteps to sound in the hall. It was a good while. They must have lain together. He heard them murmuring goodbyes at the entryway.
When Courfeyrac, without knocking, poked his head into Marius' room, his eyes were shining and his curly hair was tangled familiarly.
"Marius," he laughed, when he figured out where to look. "What the hell are you doing down there?"
Suddenly Marius did feel a bit stupid, lying on the floor like that. He considered propping himself up on an elbow, but that would have been more awkward, so he remained where he was. "Thinking."
"About what?" Courfeyrac leaned with his forearms against the doorframe, becoming, as he always did, a fluid part of the space around him. He cocked his head to one side, inquisitive. "Is it comfortable down there?"
"Not particularly."
"Then get up, you dolt." Courfeyrac stepped forward with hand outstretched, and Marius allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. For a moment, he was drawn into that languorous world where his surroundings parted to accommodate him. Then Courfeyrac let go, and the illusion broke. He looked Marius up and down.
"Are you going to the meeting like that?"
Marius frowned, a little dazed from the sudden change of perspective. The window was right-side-up again, but the clouds, an unbroken wash of white, appeared exactly the same. "Well, I thought I'd put on a coat..."
"I was more talking about the waistcoat. Your button is dangling by a thread."
Marius looked down. "So it is."
Courfeyrac stepped closer to inspect. He took the button between two fingers, turning it this way and that, before snapping it off and putting it in his pocket. Marius shot him an offended look, but he only grinned.
"It was going to fall off one way or another. This way you won't lose it. I'll sew it on for you later." Courfeyrac stepped aside, one hand at Marius' back to usher him into the hall. "For now, though, I'm sure we can find you something from my personal collection. Don't look so frightened, Pontmercy! You should wear blue. A blue would bring out your eyes."
"My eyes are brown," Marius said miserably. (He always managed to say things miserably, even when he was happy.)
"A fact that becomes all the clearer when contrasted with blue." Courfeyrac flashed him a brilliant smile.
He could never say no to Courfeyrac.
***
Like all things heavy, dusk fell quickly on their walk. Marius chased Courfeyrac through the streets, now walking, now trotting, one hand atop his head to keep his hat from flying off, as Courfeyrac unleashed a stream of cheerful profanity at the cold. He painted an impassioned picture of God, Persephone, Alexander II, and local seamstress Mila Gusevna (who made a fortune selling overcoats) all coming together to bring a shriveling spring upon Saint Petersburg in general and Courfeyrac in particular. Heads turned at his shouting, but he gave none of them a second glance; all his looks were reserved for Marius, to make sure he was laughing. And he was— as much with the pleasure of knowing that Courfeyrac wanted to make him laugh as with the absurdity of it all. He was still grinning, all nervousness forgotten, as they tumbled through the doors of the Musain.
"Upstairs," said Courfeyrac, breathless, and Marius followed.
He had sobered a little by the time they reached the second floor: a loft, really, which Marius soon saw held little more than two tables pushed together. Crowded around these twin tables was a group of men. They looked like disciples in da Vinci's Last Supper, talking animatedly, reaching around each other to deliver rebukes and acclamations. Interweaving words and limbs formed a tapestry of belief. Ideology as thickly pervaded the air as the smell of kerosene.
Marius felt suddenly out of his depth.
It was too late to turn back now, though. One of the men— the Christ at the Last Supper, the nexus around which all action revolved— spotted Courfeyrac and arched one perfect eyebrow. All talk trailed off around him. His golden hair seemed an aureole, God's gift to a favored prophet.
"You're late," he said.
Marius wanted to shrink away, but Courfeyrac kept a hand on his shoulder. "Sorry about that. I found a stray in a rubbish heap and stopped to let him sniff my hand."
"What breed is he?" asked one of the men, a tall and grinning sort with an arm draped over the back of his chair. Like Courfeyrac, he seemed to melt into the world around him, but this man's confidence went beyond the natural. He swaggered even standing still. His very countenance was a dare.
Courfeyrac smiled, laying an arm across Marius' shoulders. "Pure Russian, I assure you."
"A purebred!" cried another man, an ugly mash of vodka-flush and stubble. He leaned with an elbow on the table, chin in hand, addressing the man with the golden hair. "Enjolras, may we keep him?"
Enjolras appeared unmoved. Unlike the others, he addressed Marius directly— not Courfeyrac, as one might address a dog's owner. "Marius, I presume."
Marius nodded, face warm.
"Come sit down, then. We've reserved you a seat."
He stammered his thanks and followed Courfeyrac to the pair of empty chairs on the near side of the table. Sitting down felt like stealing something. Marius tried to retreat, to make himself as small as possible, but of course Courfeyrac insisted on drawing him back in.
"Marius," he said, "these names are long, and I don't expect you to remember them, but I'll give them to you anyway. To your left—" He nodded to a young man with auburn hair— "is Jehan Provaire, our resident poet. Next to him is Bahorel, our beloved scoundrel." The man with the swagger grinned, wolffish, and Marius looked away. "Going clockwise, we have Feuilly, Combeferre, Enjolras, Grantaire, Joly, and Bossuet to my right. And I'm Courfeyrac, in case you've forgotten." He smiled at Marius, and Marius offered a feeble smile in return.
"Welcome," said Bossuet, reaching across Courfeyrac to shake Marius' hand. He was bald, but looked young— a confusing combination, even more so for the fact that he seemed none the less cheerful for it. "You may also call me Lesgles, if you wish to break with tradition."
"Yes, Marius," said the man called Grantaire. "How do you feel about breaking with tradition?"
Enjolras shot him a pointed look. "Returning to the matter at hand. Marius, we've been discussing the relative efficacy of Proudhon's and Bakunin's methods. Combeferre here is a gradualist." The man to his left, brown eyes grave behind a pair of wire glasses, inclined his head. "I've been arguing the revolutionary side. Do you care to jump in?"
Marius opened his mouth, feeling the blood rush to his face. He did not know who Proudhon or Bakunin were.
"I do," said Courfeyrac, leaning forward to rap on the table as if heralding his own approach. Marius released his breath, relieved. "I must agree with you, Enjolras, though I agree that in a perfect world Combeferre's method would be preferable. The problem is that we don't live in a perfect world. No amount of re-plastering a crumbling building will make it new; it must be razed to its foundations so a new one may be built."
"But the state is not a building," Combeferre protested. "Enjolras, you argue that the tools used to build a social order cannot be used to strip it, but are not those tools unavoidable? We look to dismantle hierarchy, but are there not leaders in revolution? Are you not one? Do not the same vices of the state appear— glory, power, ideology? There are no tools we do not already possess, no methods that have never been corrupted. What we need to do is strip the current apparatus of corruption, take it apart and use the existing parts to create something new. It presents problems of the old ways returning, yes, but the idea that revolution cannot be touched by these problems is an illusion. Both methods hold the same risks, only with one, there is less bloodshed."
Marius listened in awe and horror. Revolution? Did they mean the serfs' emancipation, or did these men plan to overthrow the Czar? Hierarchy? How could humans exist without hierarchy? He felt faintly sick. What was he witnessing? What was Courfeyrac apart of?
"I do not claim that revolution is immune to the vices of the current order," Enjolras responded. "Only that it is less so. When do we see humans returning to their natural state? Organizing freely, tending to one another, without the oppression of government? In times of disaster. When there is a great fire or an earthquake, we come to each other's aid. This is our nature. The only problem with fires or earthquakes is that they shake people free of the state apparatus, but they do not shake apart the apparatus itself. Once the danger is passed, once infrastructure and social expectations are reinstated, these people, who were once free, once again become attached to the state. Revolution is the disaster that tears it all down, and in unifying us all at once, returning us all to our natural state, it gives us the power to fight against the return of the old order."
"But how will we know to fight against it?" said Combeferre. "When disasters occur, all most people want is to return to what they know, to what is comfortable and safe. However unsafe I may truly be, they have never seen it; a fish does not see water. There must first be education, and education is a lengthy process. We must dismantle as we educate. Gradual change comes with gradual acceptance, while revolution causes fear, and fear causes reversion."
"The experience itself would be the education. As people see the changes around them, realize how clearly preferable mutual aid is to a system of mutual exploitation, reversion will become less and less desirable. The comfort of needs met outweighs the comfort of the familiar."
Combeferre shook his head. "You misjudge the power of dogma. We seek not only comfort, but rightness, and the current order drills its rightness into all of its subjects' heads from birth."
"That is where we differ, then. You believe in the power of teaching; I believe in the power of experience."
"I believe in the power of experience as well, Enjolras. But I believe that the people must first be taught to trust in their experienced truth."
A silence descended on the table, each man digesting what had been said. Even while Enjolras and Combeferre had been speaking, they had done so amid a reverent hush, the power of their words electrifying the air.
Marius, for his part, did not understand why the destruction of the current order was taken as a given. Every order destroyed itself at some point, didn't it? Progress, slowly but inexorably, replaced piece by piece all that had stood before.
"Marius," Courfeyrac said, leaning in to whisper to him. "I can tell you're thinking something. Why not speak your mind?"
He shook his head quickly, but it was too late. The ugly man, Grantaire, had taken note of the exchange.
"Come now, Marius, speak!" he crowed. "I assure you, your opinions can be no more disdained than mine."
Marius flushed. "What are your opinions?"
"Don't ask him that," said Enjolras.
Grantaire beamed.
"Well, since you've inquired... my considered opinion is that this is all horseshit. These men claim to be nihilists, opponents of all ideology, and yet they spout ideology as they expel breath. Destroy the current order? Impossible! The idea of its own destruction is baked into every order. As Judas was guided by God to betrayal, so we are guided by politics to seek political destruction. We cannot escape the will of the society that surrounds us. The Czar is but Jesus in the garden; we may destroy him, but in doing so, we only enforce the will of God."
"God being society," Enjolras said flatly.
"God being human nature."
Everyone groaned.
"Not the human nature debate!" cried Joly. "Bossuet, take me away before I am ill!"
"Grantaire," said Enjolras, "you have made an optimist of yourself. You say that human nature is a return to a stateless society. I agree."
"No, no, angel. You mistake me. I say that human nature is destruction."
"The urge to destroy is also a creative urge," said Prouvaire, and Marius could tell he was quoting someone. Then Prouvaire turned to him, dangerously well-meaning. "I'd still like to hear your thoughts."
The table grew silent, waiting. Marius could feel all the blood in his body rushing to his face.
"I think," he squeaked at last— out of breath, heart pounding, knowing he was saying the wrong thing— "that we wouldn't be where we are today if it wasn't human nature to be here. Progress is happening. The serfs are emancipated; education is spreading; the Czar is bringing the Enlightenment to Russia. Is that not enough? Is— is that not the way things have always progressed? The way they're meant to progress?"
Oh, he really had said the wrong thing. Prouvaire looked disappointed. Enjolras' arms were crossed. Grantaire was laughing.
"Marius," said Combeferre carefully, and Marius knew he was about to say something kind and understanding and fatal. "I can see how you might think that, but please understand that it is easy to think this way when you are comfortable. Others are not comfortable. They do not have the same rights and privileges you do, and so social change is a far more pressing issue to them."
"I understand," said Marius, red-faced with shame, although really he did not understand. Bahorel burst out laughing— not at Marius, but at Combeferre.
"This from the gradualist!"
And the debate flared up again.
Courfeyrac touched Marius' shoulder, and he resisted the urge to pull away. "Are you alright?"
Marius nodded, staring down at his lap.
"Shall I say we have to leave early?"
"No. God, no."
Courfeyrac stared at him a moment longer, then sighed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I should have warned you."
"It's alright."
"I didn't know they'd jump straight into—"
"Courfeyrac, it's alright. Really."
But he still looked worried, and for the rest of the night, his hand stayed on the edge of Marius' chair.
***
After a few more hours, which Marius spent trying to imagine himself somewhere else, the meeting was adjourned. The men bid each other fond goodbyes or wandered off in search of a new haunt, and their familiarity, their easiness with each other, hurt his heart to watch. Marius had never know that kind of comfort— not with Courfeyrac, whom he revered too much not to fear disappointing him, and not with any of the fleeting friends that had come and gone in his life. A profound loneliness ate away at him as he sat in that room where camaraderie flourished, the same way he had not realized how cold he was until entering the warmth of the café.
After shaking Joly's hand goodbye, Courfeyrac turned to Marius. "Would you mind waiting below?" he asked with an apologetic look. "I'd like to speak with Enjolras."
Marius said he did not mind.
He descended to the ground floor and waited, seated at one of the empty tables. Half-hidden by the stairs, he watched the last of the men pass by. At last, there was only him below, and Enjolras and Courfeyrac above. They spoke in low tones, but now and again their voices would rise, and he could make out pieces of their conversation.
"He can learn. I'll teach him."
"Does he want to be taught?"
"He wants to be involved. He's lonely, Enjolras. I worry for him."
"It is not the function of this society to care for lonely souls."
"Think in terms of necessity, then. You need every man you can get."
The sound of shoes on wood; someone stepped closer, and all Marius could hear was the hush of whispering voices. He looked down and picked at a cuticle, sticking the finger in his mouth when he drew blood. His breath sucked the metallic taste down, filling his lungs, chilling his bones. He thought suddenly of the fly frozen halfway in its crawl to freedom.
At last, the whispering stopped, punctuated by a sigh.
"He can come to the meetings of the Druz'ya," Enjolras said, in the tone of one making a final call, "but he must never know of Zemlya i Volya."
"Yes. Thank you. That's all I wanted."
Goodbyes were exchanged, and Courfeyrac descended the stairs with a smile. "Ready to go?"
Marius nodded. He shoved his hands in his pockets as they began the walk home, taking up a brisk pace— showing that he wanted to be alone, in the same way a child does who longs to be comforted. Courfeyrac, who could always sense this, caught up and linked his arm through Marius'. It was colder out than before, but he made no mention of it, instead tilting his head to look up at the stars.
"Lovely night," he mused. "We should do something together. Go out to eat? Play cards? What do you feel like?"
Marius' eyes watered. He blamed it on the cold. "You don't have to take care of me, you know."
Courfeyrac turned to look at him. Marius stared straight ahead.
"Is that what you think? That I feel I have to take care of you?"
"Isn't it true?"
"Not in the slightest. I never do anything by obligation. Surely you must know this, Marius."
A light snow had begun to fall, adding to the dirty piles heaped up on either side of the street. Marius felt himself in danger of crying. He closed his eyes, letting Courfeyrac lead him, and said nothing.
"My friend," Courfeyrac said softly, "taking care of you is one of the most sublime joys of my humble life."
The tears spilled over and rolled down his cheeks. Alarmed, Courfeyrac stopped, studied his face, and embraced him.
Marius did not know how to respond. His arms remained limp at his sides, but he buried his face in Courfeyrac's neck, grateful to be hidden. "I'm sorry," he whispered, but Courfeyrac shushed him before the words were complete.
"Don't talk," he said, rubbing Marius' back. "Don't think. Just watch the snow."
And Marius did, as if he had never seen it before.