Disclaimer: I'm pretty sure it's obvious.
Modern day AU set in France? It's sort of ambiguous…I'm not the world's biggest fan of modern day AUs but for some reason I can't figure out how to write this any other way, which is quite awkward.
This is in no way connected to Behind the Red Flag. Jussayin'.
"And don't you dare to ever come back here again!" Violetta shouts at him as she slams the door, leaving Courfeyrac standing there, stunned, with no idea of what just happened, as per the norm.
Another door opens down the hall, and a grizzled old man pokes his head out of the doorway, looking at the young technical student with pity, fascination, and more than a bit of amusement. "Your girl kicked you out?"
"It's the first time…this week. I should be thankful for that, I suppose," Courfeyrac replies glumly.
The old man cackles. "First time this week? Ah, I remember those days. Young people always think they can rule the world."
"Um…okay then…" Courfeyrac backs away, stammering, as the old man kept on talking. "I fail to see how that's relevant, but whatever floats your boat, I suppose." He turns and quickly makes his escape down the three flights of stairs, only stopping once he reached the street.
Guess I'll have to go stay with Pontmercy again, he thinks as he slowly makes his way to the Musain. An interesting turn of events – I'm the one who just got kicked out, instead of him. At least my stuff is still in our flat. His thoughts now turn to the reason why he has to stay with that awkward lovesick boy in the first place – Violetta. Damn, Violetta. Yet another in a long line of girls, Violetta was no different from the rest. "They're all the same," he suddenly mutters aloud, kicking a pebble and almost hitting a stereotypical female blonde student, who emits a little shriek and walks faster, only proving Courfeyrac's point (or so he thinks.)
"Who's all the same?" a voice suddenly asks from behind him.
He looks over his shoulder and sees the last two people he wants to see – Joly and Bossuet, arguably the two most congenial members of the Amis besides himself. "Nothing that you should be worrying about," Courfeyrac says gruffly.
They fall into step beside him. "Aw, tell us, Courf'!" Bossuet, also known as Joseph Lesgles, nudges him playfully. "Did your newest girl run you out of the house?"
"How did you know?" Courfeyrac asks, impressed despite himself.
"It's the only plausible reason for you, Mr Laughs-at-everything, to be even the slightest bit depressed," Alexandre Joly cuts in. "Which, to be honest, I don't understand. You take on a new mistress every week or so, which means that it has to be pretty commonplace for you. So why do you get so antisocial and mopey whenever someone dumps you?"
Courfeyrac rolls his eyes. "I do not get antisocial and mopey whenever someone dumps me."
"Then what is this, if not antisociality and mopeyness?" Bossuet asks, laughing.
"Those aren't words," Courfeyrac informs him.
Smiling, Joly looks him up and down as if he were a patient. He then hems and haws for a moment before declaring, "Well now, Monsieur Courfeyrac, I do believe you have a case of heartache."
"Heartache? For that girl?" his patient snaps. "Mon Dieu, I've only known her for three days!"
"Not for her. For someone else," Joly retorts. "Although I don't believe that I know who she is."
Bossuet raises his eyebrows. "Would you be so kind as to enlighten us?"
"No," Courfeyrac says firmly. "Absolutely not."
"So that's why we believe that Nathanael Courfeyrac, over there, has had some kind of tragedy in his love life." Bossuet ended his story with a meaningful glance over to his friend, who was brooding in the corner over a tall glass of beer.
"And he won't tell us what it is," Joly adds.
"As if anyone would tell you two anything," Mathieu Bahorel grumbles.
"We're perfectly trustworthy!" Bossuet protests.
Bahorel laughs ruefully. "What happens in the Amis stays in the Amis," he intones. "And have you been following that rule?"
"Yes! Completely! We don't tell anyone anything!" Joly exclaims defensively.
Bossuet nudges him, and he falls silent. "Well, except for Musichetta, and that's only because she never stops nagging us."
"See, therein lies the problem. Now, I know Musichetta's beautiful and fascinating and wonderful and whatever it is you're saying about her this week, but she's got a fatal flaw," Bahorel says carefully.
"And what might that be?" the young medical student challenges.
"She gossips entirely too much," Bahorel replies. "You can't deny it."
Before Joly can say anything, Bossuet lays a warning hand on his arm. "It's true, Jolllly," he says, rolling out the l's. " 'Chetta does tend to have, well, a looser mouth than most. It's not a big deal." Joly shrinks away from the bald student's hand – after all, everyone carries potentially harmful microbes on their skin.
"Maybe I can weasel the answer out of 'Feyrac." All eyes now turn to Jehan Prouvaire, who has been sitting quietly and writing poetry for the past hour. At the surprised looks he gets, he simply replies, "Yes, I have been paying attention, contrary to popular belief."
"Good luck," Combeferre says. "He's tough as a closed clam when he gets like this."
Prouvaire grins mischievously. "I have my ways. Watch and learn, fellows."
"I honestly don't believe that Prouvaire is going to be able to get the story out of ol' Courfeyrac," Bossuet whispers to Joly.
The medical student shrugs. "I wouldn't be so sure of that. I'm pretty sure he's hiding a lot of things from us," he says as he watches the young literature student saunter up to Courfeyrac nonchalantly.
"What's wrong, Courf'?" he asks, sitting down on the table.
Courfeyrac shakes his head. "Nothing."
"Oh, really now?" Prouvaire replies, raising his eyebrows. "Two little birds told me that your newest mistress broke up with you today. What was her name? Rosa? Lily? Dahlia? Some kind of flower, if I'm not mistaken. A beautiful name."
"Violette," Courfeyrac mumbles, head in his arms on the table. "But she's not the problem."
"So there is a problem," his friend says, standing up and stretching.
Sighing, Courfeyrac protests, "There is no problem."
"You just admitted that there was one," Prouvaire counters. "When you said that Violette wasn't 'the problem.' "
"Literature students," Courfeyrac mutters. "You shouldn't even be so concerned with linguistics. Don't you analyze the life out of random literary classics or something?"
Prouvaire sits back down and says nonchalantly, "That, my dear Courfeyrac, is totally and completely besides the point. So, care to tell me what the problem is?"
"There is no problem!" Courfeyrac lifts his head off the table and glares at the cheeky literature student. "Can't you just leave me alone?"
"I will," Prouvaire says. Courfeyrac lifts his eyebrows – he doesn't trust him. And for good reason too – "If you tell me what's wrong," Prouvaire adds, grinning.
Sighing, Courfeyrac asks cynically,"So you can tell everyone and their cat? No thanks."
"Come on, Courf'! I won't tell anybody!" Seeing Courfeyrac glance towards the gaggle of university students sitting at the table across the room, Prouvaire decides to amend his statement. "Well, besides them, of course."
"No. And that is final, Jehan Prouvaire." Courfeyrac slams his glass on the table and stands up. "Now would you be so kind as to leave?"
Seeing that simple pestering isn't going to get him anywhere, Prouvaire decides to try a slightly different tactic."Well, I heard from Bossuet that you've had some tragedy in your love life. Do tell." He's perfectly aware that this might be too blunt of a way to put it, but, well, what can he do?
And he's right. "Prouvaire, this conversation is over." Courfeyrac says as he storms out of the café, Prouvaire (and the others) staring after him.
Courfeyrac is still paying half the rent on the flat, owing to the facts that Pontmercy isn't making enough money to pay for it by himself and they both determined that Courfeyrac would have to come back soon enough, in accordance with numerous previous occasions. However, Courfeyrac isn't in the mood for conversation with anyone, and so he starts aimlessly wandering the streets.
When he began this fling with Violetta, he knew full well that it would end somewhat like this. After all, he doesn't do anything out of love. He hasn't let himself love since…since…
He was young. She was younger. Doesn't love grow out of naiveté?
They met one night at Le Poisson Bondissant (The Leaping Fish). He had been dragged there as moral support by Feuilly for his Polish girl. She had similarly been forced to come by Danuta to minimize awkwardness should the date turn out less enjoyable than expected. Being the third (and fourth) wheel(s), they immediately took to each other, so much that Feuilly even joked that he was starting to feel like the moral support.
He told her he was the son of a wealthy lawyer, which was the truth. She told him that she was a waitress at a café, which was the truth. Aren't the best relationships built on honesty?
Because she was supporting a sickly mother and three younger siblings, she could rarely get away from her job. So he often ate at that café, and by some quirk of fate she was almost always his waitress. Despite her protests, he always left a hefty tip (and a kiss, but that's another story entirely). His parents didn't mind the huge class disparity as long as he wasn't simply having another fling, and her mother saw his value and was satisfied that her eldest child wouldn't make the same mistake that she herself did.
He was desperately in love with her. She was desperately in love with him. Isn't desperate love true love?
After having talked to his parents and her mother, he was ready to make his move. He came into the café one day as per the usual, and she came over to take his order. When he saw her, he picked her up, whirled her into the seat he had just vacated, and got down on one knee, ring box in hand.
"Will you marry me?"
"Nathanael…I can't."
"What? Of course you can! Isn't this what we've been planning for?"
"Nathanael, you don't understand."
"What is it? What is it I don't understand?"
"I can't marry you. That's all I can say."
"What, is there another man in your life or something?"
"Well…yes."
He stood up and said coldly, "Well, if that's how it is, then we're over," and strode out of the café.
She looked forlornly after him, unable to explain, until the barkeeper thundered for her to "get your arse working."
A week later, he got a letter in the post.
"Dear Nathanael, you never allowed me to explain why I can't marry you, so I guess I'll just have to do it here, where you can't help but read it."
He was about to tear it up, but something inside him made him keep going.
"I'm not seeing another man, dear Nathanael. It's not what you think it is."
"Then what is it?" he growled but kept reading.
"I had a childhood friend, Jean-Marc Chirot, who had always been saying that he would marry me when we grew up. This lasted into our adulthood, and when he discovered that I had been seeing you, he was devastated. Even worse, somehow he had learned that you were going to propose marriage to me, and the next day, they found a suicide note in his bedroom and his body on the pavement of the Rue de Nesle. It's not your fault, dear Nathanael, but I don't think I could marry a man who caused the death of another, however accidental it was. I'm sorry."
Somehow Courfeyrac ends up telling the whole story to Pontmercy. Why? He'll never know. And he's already thinking that he's going to regret it when Pontmercy asks, "What was her name?"
Courfeyrac hasn't been able to mention her name to anyone, not even his closest friends, since she rejected him for something he took no part in. He has barely been able to think of her name, yet he thinks of her all the time. She is the reason why his heart is no longer made of flesh.
Pontmercy will never understand, he thinks. Not while he's still infatuated with his Cosette or Colette or Corette. Yet something inside him makes him speak.
"Marthe." And so, the hidden pain that he had carried for these years is released in one word.
A.N. Thanks to the wonderful stagepageandscreen for (unknowingly) getting me out of my writing dump and providing me with this prompt! Sorry I haven't exactly been working on Behind the Red Flag. It's just that…um…well…*stutters* I've kind of been watching Doctor Who on Netflix…and I'm kind of obsessed with Captain Jack Harkness…but isn't like half the female population of Whovians? Maybe? Possibly? Or am I just awkward?
And my characterization of Bossuet and Joly is a bit OOC but I needed pranksters because Courfeyrac was down for the count. :P And I call them "The Birds" because Bossuet = Laigle and Jolllly…well, "you can soar on four wings" so yeah. Does that make sense to anyone but me?
-tWAtD or Kestrel