for the clatoficholla exchange on tumblr!
prompt: i did not choose him, he did not choose me (history au)
summary: alternate universe set during the french revolution in the early 1790s. at that point during the revolution, groups of radicals were starting to rise in paris, and although they were fighting to overthrow the king and to achieve equality in the government, they often resorted to violence and brute force, and paris was engulfed in chaos and violence for a number of years. anyway, the whole bloody/violenty/brutal thing struck me as very clato-y, and basically in this fic, cato is leading the violent revolts in paris and clove is a parisian citizen who is appalled by his brutality. this is also heavily inspired by the story of charlotte corday and jean-paul marat (don't look them up unless you want to spoil the story ((!)) )
must-know vocab: the girondin were a group of political moderates who opposed violence and were disliked by radical revolutionaries, such as cato and many of the parisians mentioned in this story. a guilltone was a blade-ish machine used for executions during the french revolution. looking up a picture would be a good idea if you've never seen one.
[xxx]
Clove never goes into town without a knife. Not in these times.
She's heard the rumors. She's heard the stories. She's heard the tales of these men called revolutionaries, spreading throughout Paris and leaving destruction in their wake.
She's heard the stories, and she's seen it herself. She's seen the crowds, heard the shouting, witnessed the violence and the bloodshed and the men with nothing but darkness in their eyes.
She's seen the way these men look at her, and she's heard stories of girls who are taken and never seen again.
And as Clove leaves her small, rundown home and heads for town, she tucks a kitchen knife between her breats, beneath the hem of her dress.
Clove never goes into town without a knife. Not in these times.
x
In September, the "revolutionaries" storm the prison in Paris, kill thousands of men and women and children, stand in pools of blood deeper than their ankles, slice neck after neck and ignore the bloodcurling screams from every dry voice.
"Rational," these men call themselves. "Civilized."
"Enlightened," they tell the Paris papers.
It's disgusting. Clove hates it. Hates them.
She wonders how anyone can see these men as anything besides barbarians.
x
Eventually, a name surfaces, for the man who's behind all this, the man who leads these riots and these attacks and these violent, angry parades throughout Paris.
He's young, Clove hears, young and strong and extraordinarily handsome.
And he's smart, people say; smart and powerful and intelligent, and supposedly he and his band of revolutionaries are going to turn France upside down.
His name, she learns, is Cato, and she hates him.
x
Cato.
She hates the way the name tastes in her mouth, all sharps and angles and staccatos.
Like old bread, hard and stale and a little bit too warm.
Cato, his name is.
She hates him.
x
"Revolutionaries," Cato and his men call themselves, as they kill man after man, preist after priest, prince after prince, wife after wife.
They fill the streets of Paris with blood, and more than once Clove has had to pull her knife on a boy or a man who tries to appraoch her in town.
"A revolution" is what they call this; this bloodshed, this violence, this death.
But this is not a revolution. Nothing is changing. Clove and her family still do not have food on their table every night.
This is not a revolution.
Except for the screams that sound through Paris at night, and except for the bodies on the street corners, nothing is changing.
x
Cato.
She whispers his name late at night, wondering how he lives with himself knowing that the blood of Paris is in his hands.
"Cato," she whispers, counting the number of tiles in the ceiling like Cato counts the bodies of men and women and children, murdered and piled up by the gutter.
Cato.
She has never even met him, but she hates him more than anyone she has never known.
x
Months pass. Things stay the same.
Clove's mother warns her to control her temper.
"Fighting back," her mother tells her, "will only make things worse."
But Clove is growing tired of fighting fire with water, and seeing nothing but smoke.
Fire against fire could make a spark, and a spark could spread.
A spark could burn Cato and his revolution to the ground.
(If it can even be called revolution.
Nothing is changing.)
x
And early that spring, on a silent, humid night in April, Clove is standing outside Cato's door, taking a deep, determined breath and sending up a short prayer for forgiveness as her fingers grip the small cross she always keeps tied around her neck.
As she knocks on Cato's door, however, she knows, in her mind and in the farthest depths of her instinct, that what she is about to do is right, and that someday, whether or not it be soon, she will be remembered.
The front door opens, and a hands ushers her inside. Clove enters, slowly and cautiously, but not nervously, her hands firm and unshaking as she absentmindedly straighens out the creases in her dress.
Cato turns to her, and asks if she's brought the list. Clove smiles a little. He really had believed the story she'd made up in her letter to him; about having a list of Girondin, of counterrevolutionaries, of political traitors seeking to bring Cato down.
Without responding, she takes a step forward, left hand moving to her chest as she sudies this man, this Cato, for the first-and last-time.
Like she has heard, he is young, and he is blonde, and he is very, very handsome, but there's something in his eyes, something dark, and something in his smile, something twisted; something that makes bile rise in the back of her throat.
She hates him.
"A revolutionary," he calls himself.
And most people, most of France, has fallen for it.
But Clove knows better.
Her fingers wrap around the blade under her dress, and Cato doesn't even have time to scream before the weapon is lodged in his chest, right in his heart.
And Clove allows herself a tiny, tiny smile.
Because an army is nothing without its leader, and this "revolution" is now as dead as the man lying in front her.
x
She doesn't put up a fight when Cato's friends find her standing beside Catos' body the next morning.
x
She doesn't put up a fight when the guards tie her hands behind her back and drag her into a prison cell.
x
She doesn't put up a fight as they lead her through an entirely unfair trial; as she is given no mercy, is convincted of murder, is sentenced to death.
They only allow her to speak once, but there's only one thing she wants to say, anyway.
"J'ai tue un homme pour sauver 100.000."
(I killed one man, to save 100,000.)
x
And lastly, she doesn't put up a fight as she is brought to stand on the wooden platform of the guillotine in Paris. The guards cut off her hair and tie her wrists so tight that the skin burns, the people in the crowd yell and spit and say horrible, unrepeatable things, but she doesn't put up a fight, doesn't react, doesn't even care.
Someday, they will be thinking her for what she's done, for saving Paris from destruction.
x
Clove's neck is placed on the wood of the guillitone, her body laid down and her feet and hands rendered immobile by ropes and cords.
She feels the cross necklace under her dress pressing cold against her skin, and she knows that this is it. She is about to die.
As the guards wind up the sharp, silver blade that will end her life with nothing but a thump and a soft, quick squishing sound, she thinks about Cato.
They will go down in history, together, whether she likes it or not; he will be remembered as the boy stabbed in the chest with a kitchen knife, and she will be remembered as the peasant girl who did it.
The winding stops, and the crowd around her becomes dead still and dead silent.
The last thing she feels is something cold, pressing against her neck as the rest of her turns hot, like every bone in her body is on fire.
x
Maybe she and Cato started a revolution.
Neither will never live to see it.
[xxx.]