This is one of my submissions to the collaboration that Mamzelle Combeferre mentioned at the beginning of her two stories-"Backroom Musings" and "An Unlucky Man and a Lucky Encounter." If you haven't read these two, you really ought to check them out. Mine probably isn't as good, but...here it is anyway. Hope you enjoy!
According to you, Julien, I was a laurel crown short of Alexander on the day that I arrived in Paris on my father's black horse. I was eighteen then, freshly gone from a monarchist family. You met me outside the University and offered me a place to stay when you discovered that I had nowhere to go; I rejected your offer out of pride and spent that night in the library. I moved into your flat the next afternoon.
After you got me settled in, and I had a moment to gape at your selflessness, you asked me how I came here. I didn't like talking about myself, and I still don't like talking about myself, but I owed you that much for taking me in. We sat down by your fire, and I began to explain.
I didn't run away. When people get to know me, they usually just assume that my father and I disagreed politically (which we did), and that was why I left, but there was more than that. My mother was sick very often, and the shouting matches between my father and me, her only son, rattled her nerves. We tried to be quiet around her, but the tensions in our house mounted inevitably. One day, Father snapped.
Things started off normally enough. He shouted at me a bit because I skipped dinner again, and of course, it digressed into how my hoodlum ways caused Mother so much pain, and how my political opinions embarrassed the whole family. I shouted back, and my poor mother, the only member of my family that I truly loved, watched with fear in her eyes. Father struck me, and she squeaked; I punched him back, and she swooned. Right as my father was drawing back his hand, she collapsed from her chair for all the nerves. I was shocked, unable to move any part of me in terror. As a sixteen year old, I didn't know very much about medicine, and I thought her dead. My father caught sight of her and rushed to her side. He looked up at me with rage.
"Get out!" he snarled.
"I—is she going to be all right?" I asked.
"GET OUT!"
"Father, please—."
"I never want to see your face again." In two seconds, he'd gone from shouting to whispering in a dangerous tone. "I'm ashamed to call you my son."
"I didn't—!"
"Get out. Now."
I didn't give him a chance to reconsider. I ran. I grabbed the first clothes I could lay hands on and put them in a bag with a pouch full of golden Louis. I threw a saddle onto one of the horses and rode out into the warm summer night.
I kept to the back roads for days without stopping, crying silently all the while. Then, I spent almost a month wandering in and out of provincial towns before I finally found my way to Paris. I had to wander around the streets for hours, hair disheveled and clothes filthy (not that I cared), until a tall, rosy boy about my age stopped me in the street. He introduced himself as Gabriel Courfeyrac.
"What a sorry state you're in," he commented as he showed me towards the University campus.
"You're not very charming, are you?" I grumbled.
"I'm told quite the opposite," he remarked lightly, "but I suppose these compliments were paid by a rather biased party… I think you must be from the south, though. You're a different sort down there. I grew up in the Midi, you know."
"Did you, now?" I asked.
"Yes. Quite well-off, my parents are. Father was thick as thieves with old Louis XVI. That's why I left."
"You have…political sentiments?"
"Oh, of course. Everyone in Paris does, I suppose. How about you?"
"Uh, yes. I have political opinions, that is."
"Well?"
"Republican," I said quietly.
"Oooh, that's dangerous. Perhaps I ought to introduce you to some of my friends—you see, we have this sort of club that meets once a week or so. Just a few other students, not very organized. You might like some of what you hear, though."
"Really?"
"Not kidding. You should meet this one man who comes regularly. He's painted fans for a living since he was thirteen, and he was orphaned before that. He takes care of his two younger siblings all by himself. There are all sorts of people who come to the meetings, but like I said, no real structure to be seen."
"I'll have to look into it.
"You should. Also, I don't believe I caught your name before. What was it?"
"Enjolras. Marcelin Enjolras."
"Pleasure to meet you. I—."
That was when you interrupted us, Julien. I turned to see the source of the timid disruption, and the rest, as they say, is history.