Author's Note: This is a Barricade Day ficlet for tumblr user artdalek.
The day was bright, but Musichetta didn't want to leave her room. She didn't want her feelings to be blown this way and that, like a moth on rough and whimsical winds, by the contradictory rumors that would spread through Paris in the wake of any event as fast as the cholera had and persist as tenaciously as any of Joly's miasmas.
Besides, Annette and Hélène were here. Not only did she have to be a good hostess and look after her guests, but Annette would likely go mad if exposed to the gossip of the Paris streets at this time.
They had rolled bandages at the Rue de la Chanvrerie, all three of them, and then they had left when only those who intended to fight remained. Musichetta had determinedly not said goodbye to Joly or Bossuet, had resolutely said she would see them again soon.
The three of them had prayed until Musichetta had lost patience with prayer. She'd read a book until her candle gave out, and she could not justify another. Then Annette and Hélène had fallen asleep, and Musichetta had paced the length and breadth of her chamber, quietly so as not to wake them. She always paced when anxious. Bossuet had laughed at her for it, saying she marched like a soldier.
"Are you planning to invade Russia, my sweet?" He had kissed her hair, slipping an arm round her waist, and she could feel his chuckle bubbling up from deep within his chest.
She had laughed back, saying how would he know? He had never marched in a war, merely thrown stones in émeutes—
—(and, in 1830, defended a barricade, but she didn't mention that; she had no heart to joke about it).
Joly had come up on her other side, pressing his lips to her neck, and she had leaned against him and pulled Bossuet inwards, and the three of them had gone to bed not long after that.
She paced all last night, and slept for only two hours, and still she was not weary. Her blood seemed to sing in her veins as if she were at the barricade with them, as if she were dodging bayonet-thrusts or aiming a carbine, but she was not. She lacked the release of action; she could only wait, and there was no torment like it.
She had orders to fill; she tried to make herself sew; but she could not manage that either. Her stitches came out as crooked as they had when she first threaded a needle as a child. Her hands shook, and she stabbed herself in the finger.
"Perhaps we could pray more," said Hélène, as Musichetta stuck her finger in her mouth.
"You pray if you want," said Annette waspishly. "If prayer meant anything, our boys could have prayed Louis-Philippe off the throne, and there'd be no need for any barricades."
Hélène raised her eyebrows, and Musichetta feared she would have to play peacemaker, but Hélène was an understanding woman: she kept her silence, and did not repay sharpness in kind.
The rap on the door startled them all. Annette clutched Hélène's hand, her ill temper forgotten.
"Luc!" Musichetta said. Annette rushed forward, pushing Musichetta out of the way in her relief, throwing her arms around the neck of the man in the doorway.
He gently detached her, looking very grave, and Musichetta knew.
"No," she said. No, no, it couldn't be, not both of them. If Luc had survived—
Luc simply looked at her.
"How did you—"
"They sent me away, once it became clear we would lose," he whispered. "Enjolras and Combeferre—we were surrounded, but they had some National Guardsman uniforms, enough for five of us to escape, they insisted on not wasting lives, though every man of us wanted to stay—they put it to a vote, and…"
And Luc had a sick mother, a brother who had lost a leg, and three young sisters. Joly and Bossuet had only Musichetta, and each other.
She had to ask. "Joly? Lesgle?"
Luc looked away. "They stayed."
Of course they stayed. Of course they both stayed. If one stayed the other would. Neither would abandon the other; they would prefer to abandon Musichetta instead.
That wasn't fair. She knew it wasn't fair. Part of her didn't care whether it was fair or not, but she would fight that weak, selfish impulse. She would not give in to it.
She felt Hélène's hand on her shoulder. Hélène had no man at the barricades; she was here to be a friend to Musichetta and Annette, and because she sympathized with the republican cause. "Were there any survivors?"
"From the Chanvrerie barricade? They are saying no."
Musichetta heard herself let out a sob, and fought back another.
"On the streets, they are comparing it to Thermopylae," Luc said softly, and Musichetta heaved a strangled breath—she would not go to pieces, she would not, she would not—
"They are letting people claim the bodies now," Luc added, and Musichetta gave in. They might have died like Spartans but she didn't have to live like one. She could weep, and weep she did.
The world kept turning, that was the most insulting part. Oh, there were trials, and there was rhetoric, but for the most part the world barely reflected the fact that her boys had ever lived, let alone that they were dead, that they had died young in battle instead of old in their beds.
Musichetta walked through her life for the weeks afterwards as if she were drunk. She stayed away from Annette, who tried to comfort her. Annette had only one man at the barricades, and he came home. Musichetta had two and they both died. She stayed away from Hélène, with her patience and her kindness that made Musichetta want to scream. Hélène was a good friend, and Musichetta knew she was being ungrateful, but she was in no state to receive kindness, not just yet. Some day she would be, perhaps, but not just yet. Some of the other girls she knew were sympathetic but Musichetta was not sure if she wanted their sympathy. She did not know which of them, precisely, had snickered at her behind her back when it became apparent that both Joly and Bossuet were hers. To be the mistress of one student was respectable, for any grisette; it was the next thing to marriage, which of course was impossible. To be the mistress of two was the sign of loose morals, and entitled the other grisettes to scorn and judge.
They had families, both of them, but she could not grieve with them. She was a mistress, not a wife, and her grief was invisible. Joly had offered her marriage in a fit of romantic idealism. She'd said no, laughing.
"Don't you believe me?" Joly had said, sounding genuinely hurt, but the answer to that question was only half a 'yes.'
She had thought that, in time, it might become a full 'yes,' but time was not one of their gifts.
One day in mid-June she wound up in front of the Café Musain. She had never been there before, and was not sure exactly how she had gotten there now. For want of anything better to do, or perhaps because she wanted to see the place where Joly and Bossuet had laid the groundwork for their deaths, she went inside and ordered soup.
The waitress gave Musichetta an odd look as she placed the bowl on the table. "Are you Musichetta?"
"Yes," said Musichetta, startled. "How did you—"
"Your beauty mark," said the waitress, gesturing at the mark at the corner of Musichetta's lip. "Monsieur Joly spoke of it once or twice, when he was very drunk."
"Oh!" Musichetta felt the shock of sorrow once again. "Of course, you knew him—you must be Louison."
"Yes," said the waitress. "I knew them. Guillaume—Bahorel—especially, but Joly and Bossuet, too." She paused. "I am very sorry," she added.
"I did not know Bahorel," Musichetta said, "but I heard Jolllly and Bossuet speak of him." She used the old nickname for Joly without thought.
Louison smiled. "Bahorel would not have minded dying in a fight," she said, a bit sadly. "He once told me we all die fighting something, even if we die in our beds."
Musichetta was not sure she liked that thought at all; she did not want to agree with it. But she could imagine Joly and Bossuet telling themselves this, at the end, and cheering themselves with it, and for a very brief moment the throb inside her dulled, and she felt something like peace.