She didn't expect to become friends with the young man, much less fall in love with him, but that's a story that's better told in more than one sentence.

She was an actress, a good one, and he was a medical student, and someday he was going to be a great doctor, but that first day he was a patron of the theatre. He found her after the show and offered her a flower, a dandelion, he had found growing on the side of the theater-house, because he hadn't come prepared. She laughed, a tinkling sound that reminded him of wind chimes, and accepted the token happily.

The next time he visited her, he came with a bouquet of silken flowers "They will never aggravate the senses." He said, by way of explanation, and she laughed, adding that they'll never wither or die, so she could keep them in her flat forever if she so wished. "I hope you do." He responded shyly, tapping the tip of his nose with his cane, a habit she would slowly come to love.

They fell into a routine quickly. He would come to her performances, wait for her after curtains, and they would have dinner, whether buying it or making it and sharing at her flat when Marcel was not calling on her. He spoke of medicine and his own ailments and she spoke of literature and the theatre company and only of Marcel once. If her teacher and lover was jealous of the medical student, Musichetta didn't notice.

Until, of course, he told her that he was, while she was preparing for a show no less. She had never been frightened of the man before this point. But he nearly raised a hand to her when she would not answer him when he asked if she loved this man, this Joly. She didn't come out the stage door to meet her friend that night. That night she stayed in her dressing room with Marcel, comforting him, promising him that she wasn't mad, that she knew he didn't mean it, meanwhile all she wanted to do was run and never see her teacher again.

Things grew more complicated for them after that. His attendance to her shows became spotty, and she stopped inviting him back to her flat, at Marcel's request. He got wrapped up in this group he vaguely refers to as Les Amis, or at least that's what it sounds like as he checks his tongue in her hand mirror. Eventually, they stop meeting altogether, and Musichetta stops singing while she prepares for her performances.

The first time she ran from Marcel is the last. He came home completely drunk and screaming mad, calling her all manner of horrible things and shoved her against the wall, the smell of absinthe thick on his breath. She, however, would not stand for such a thing. She was not her mother. She spit in his face and kneed him in the groin and grabbed her shawl as he lay on the ground, groaning that she should never come back, that she'd never work again. Chetta left the flat, her home, and all her possessions and ran, not once looking back.

She ran to the Musain, of all places. Joly had told her that the café housed him and his friends, and she didn't know his address, so the establishment was her best choice. A young, bald man with a cheerful grin greeted her, and she ignored the way he looked at her. Too many men looked at her that way, and at the moment, the only man she wanted was the hypochondriac who had once given her a wilted dandelion just to hear her laugh.

He held her through the night, once Bossuet, for that was the bald man's name, had fetched him for her. The two of them had brought her home, taking care to check if she was hurt, and soothing the small bruise on her wrist where Marcel and grabbed her. Joly wrapped her up in his quilt and laid down with her in his bed, whispering kind words and promises to keep her safe. He didn't try to touch her, but he kept a gentle hand on her hair, stroking gently and lulling her to sleep. She swore later, that night was the first time she had ever felt so loved in her life.

They fell into their affair easily. Friends were able to get her things from Marcel's flat and deliver them to Joly's, because it made sense for them to live together. She would go home with him every evening, and Bossuet would join them every other night for dinner, not wanting to intrude on the new relationship. Joly told her that he was staying with Jehan on the nights he allowed them their privacy.

Those nights became blessed in her memory. The first time they made love she swore she saw stars. He was an attentive lover, memorizing every detail of her body, and cataloguing her sighs and moans for the next time, and the next time, and the time after that. He connected the freckles on her back with a line of kisses and she opened up for him like a flower on a warm spring day, and when they laid together afterwards, their sweat cooling and moonlight streaming through the smallest crack in his windows, they whispered vows of love and held each other until daylight.

The first time Bossuet approached her, he was shy and quiet, like a boy much younger than he was. He asked her how Joly was and if his name was ever mentioned. "Of course. We often speak about you when you aren't at dinner. I would even go so far as to say you are one of our favorite subjects." Her eyes twinkled with humor, because it was truth, they did speak about the man often, and always with a fond tone. He blushed and nodded, thanking her before going off to rejoin his friends.

The second time he approached her, he had a gift. It was after the first performance of Candide, in which she had played Cunégonde, the love interest. He presented her with a small cigarette case, silver with dandelions engraved on it. "Joly designed it and Feuilly helped me to engrave it." He explained. "We both wished to give it to you on opening night, but he has fallen ill with the pox this evening." He rolled his eyes in a shared sigh of exasperation for Joly's imagined ailments, and she laughed, accepting the case gratefully. She would use it until it broke, nearly twenty years later, though she never got rid of the pieces.

The third time he approached her he was more confident, and she wondered if that had to do with the fact that Joly was with him. She raised an eyebrow when Joly took her hand, but only because at the same time he had taken Bossuet's. Now, she knew that her hypochondriac had affections towards men; He had told her stories of secret rendezvous in his youth when she mentioned her performance of Shakespeare's The Twelfth Night, where she had been asked to dress as a man and played out a marriage to another woman, but seeing Joly turn his affections to another man while also keeping her on his arm caused her pause. The moment was short lived when he pulled them both into his rooms and out of the public eye.

"You both know I love you." He started saying, and they nodded, almost in sync. "And you are fond of each other." The two shared a confused look before nodding tentatively. Joly simply smiled wider and brought their hands to his lips, so that he may kiss them both in one motion. "I propose" He said as his lips connected with their skin, "That we three stay together. No more going back and forth between homes and beds and friends. Bossuet, stay with myself and Musichetta." The implied, unspoken words saying that he would stay in their bed were not lost on Chetta, but Bossuet frowned and shook his head. "I don't want to be an imposition." He responded quickly.

In a moment of impulse, and of revelation on Musichetta's part, she reached out to rest her chin on Bossuet's shoulder. "You would not be. Lesgle, we would love to have you." We would love to love you. The Eagle had no choice but to swallow, ever wary of any bit of good luck that was thrown his way, and nod, letting them pull him into their happiness. He fell into them easily, with joy and gratitude and every ounce of love he was capable of.

The first time the three of them made love, it was not without some difficulties. Maneuvering three people in an act usually made for only two took some creativity, but that was half the fun. Having Joly groan against her as Bossuet took him was one of the most intimate and satisfying events of her life. The way he looked and sounded between her legs as she shared a look of joy with Bossuet threatened to undo her just then, but then they started to move, and Musichetta finally understood what the men were talking about when they spoke of la petite mort when lovemaking.

The next few days were the happiest of her life. Everyone in the company told her she was positively glowing with the joy of love, and it made her beam just a little wider each time. Her smile only faltered once, when Marcel decided to visit her dressing room. "Do you truly love him?" He asked, slurring the words. "This is not an appropriate conversation." She stood, defensive, and reached for a hat pin, unwilling to be a victim of his alcohol fueled rage. He laughed at her bravery and shrugged. "He'll grow tired of you, in the end. Just like all the rest. And like all those other times, you'll come crawling back to me. And I might take you back, if I'm feeling generous. Remember Chetta, I made you. And these revolutionaries will break your heart." And with that, he turned on his heel and left.

Never fall in love with a revolutionary, because they'll break your heart. She knew it, of course, but then she had gone and fallen in love with two of them. And she was, desperately and irrevocably in love with two of the best, kindest, loveliest mean she had ever had the good fortune to meet. And they were fated to break her heart. Because for a revolutionary, the needs of their country always took precedence over their own needs, and they needed her.

It was warm, their last night together, even if they did not know for certain if it was just that. The night before LaMarque's funeral they laid wrapped up in each other before hands started to wander and soft moans became louder and more insistent and Musichetta would never forget the way they looked at her as her head fell back in a moment of unadulterated pleasure, like they were seeing the sun for the first time, and as they fell asleep, Musichetta couldn't help but cling to them a little tighter. She would not sleep that night, too preoccupied with committing each inch of their skin to memory, preparing herself for a time where she would have to remember them, without the promise of seeing them before supper.

She kissed them each goodbye that morning, and sang lullabies until a messenger came to give her a letter, signed by them telling her that they would be spending the night at the barricade, and not to worry, they would be back for supper the next night, and that they loved her. She would put the letter in the cigarette case they had given her all those months ago, and there it stayed until it yellowed and crumbled, aged with more readings than she cared to admit.

The first night she laid in bed alone, the sound of cannons going off in the distance, she cried all night, and had nightmares of being left alone in the middle of a storm and the flash of rifles instead of lightening.

It was almost noon until the officer came for her, asking her to come identify the bodies. She didn't remember falling to the floor as her knees stopped working, or the wretched sobs that were forced from her throat as the officer helped her upright and took her to where they had lined up her friends. She vaguely remembered reaching out to touch them both as she nodded, whispering their names hoarsely to confirm their identities. She told whoever would listen that she would take care of the funeral arrangements for the two of them, and she did. She emptied her purse and spared no expense. They were buried next to one another, with matching headstones and a plot reserved next to them for her. She though they would appreciate that, that she had thought that far ahead, because she knew that they would be cross with her if she had decided to use the plot too soon.

She rarely sang after their death. She left the theater company and moved to a small cottage in the south of France, where the sea air made her smile. There was a great deal o talk when she arrived, the poor girl. Widowed at such a young and fragile age, and in such a condition. Her pregnancy prevented her from moving her things into her new home, but the people of the village were kind, and understanding once she explained that her husband had died in June. News of the sacrifices had reached them, and Musichetta was treated as a war widow, and when her daughter was born, the girl was treated honorably, and not as the bastard she was. Her name was Jeanne Barnet, as her mother had decided to keep her maiden name after her husband had passed away, and she never really knew her father was, as her mother refused to name him. Musichetta never married, though she made many friends, and even joined a new theater company, once her daughter was old enough to be left alone for some time. It made her smile, to watch her daughter play, because she swore she could see a bit of both of them in her, even if that was impossible. Jeanne had Joly's habit of tapping her nose, and Bossuet's clumsiness, and like the two of them, she loved Musichetta with all that she had.

On her death bed, Musichetta told her daughter the story of a young actress who fell in love with two men, of dandelions and revolutions and a letter that was written by those two men who had fallen just as much in love with each other as they had with her. She told Jeanne that even though she never knew him, her father was the greatest man Musichetta had ever known, and it did not make a difference if she was talking about Joly, or Bossuet, because the statement held true for both of them. She requested that she be buried in a plot reserved for her in Paris, and that her old, tarnished cigarette case and the old letter that was close to tearing be buried with her. Jeanne promised her mother that it would all be taken care of, and that she could rest easy. "Your fathers would be so proud of you." She whispered, words of love still on her lips as she took her last breaths. And with that, she left to join her lovers, who were waiting for her with open arms and joyous smiles.

Jeanne read the letter once before placing it in her mother's coffin, and for a moment she could not let herself cry. She did not want her tears to fall on the precious paper that held her fathers' last words to the woman they loved most of all.

Dearest Chetta,

We have to stay the night here, love. It's frightfully uncomfortable, and Bossuet is covered in bruises from tripping over stray pieces of the barricade, but I'm tending to our Eagle, don't worry. I fear that a splinter I received is going to become infected, in which case, I have to trust you'll be able to take care of your two ill men. We'll be home soon, love. Keep the candles lit, Chetta, darling.

I love you terribly,

Joly

Dear Chetta,

Joly told you about his splinter didn't he? I told him he'd be fine, but our hypochondriac doesn't listen to me unless you tell him as well. I'm fine, love, I've just got a bruise on my leg from where I banged it on a table leg. Your kiss tomorrow will fix it all, I'm certain. I can't wait to see you tomorrow night, my love. I don't think I'll let you out of my sight until the sun comes up. I'm sure Joly will be in agreement. We'll see you soon, mon pissenlit.

I love you terribly,

Bossuet