Setting: Canon Era
Rating: T
Genre: General
Characters: Enjolras, Combeferre, Prouvaire, Feuilly Courfeyrac, Bahorel, Bossuet, Joly, Grantaire, Musichetta
Warnings: character death
Word Count: 403
Memento Mori
There is a piano set in the sitting room of the Enjolras household.
It has not been touched in years, its cloth covering already coated with a thick layer of dust and grime.
It lays waiting for the beloved prodigal son who will not return home.
Madame Combeferre likes keeping her son's room spotless in preparation for his visits.
A week after the riots, while dusting the room her son will never use again, she notices the package carefully tucked in a corner of his top drawer.
"Joyeux anniversaire, Maman."
When Prouvaire was killed, the National Guard searched his body for possessions. They found his old, battered notebook, filled to the brim with his thoughts and his words. They burn it the next day, on account of a subversive passage written in the margins, calling for a return to the Republic.
Feuilly's landlady opens his door a week after the riots. His room looks the same way as he left it, with the delicately painted fans laid out near the window to dry and his paint set placed in the middle of his worktable. It would be a shame to throw them all out when the new tenant moves in.
Thérèse de Courfeyrac liked to hide in her brother's wardrobe. It was her favourite game, waiting for him to find her behind his dizzying array of cravats and coats. The only time she did not want to be found was on the date of his funeral.
Marie never really expected her lover to have a long, peaceful life. He was a Spanish bull, always eager to charge head first into a red mantel. It is also the colour red with which he leaves her, red-rimmed eyes wiped on a collar of his favourite scarlet waistcoat.
Musichetta is the one who clears out her boys' shared room. She takes what she can before their landlord claims their possessions as payment for the rent. She is left with a top hat and the memory of a long, lingering kiss.
On Grantaire's birthday, the year Louis-Philippe was overthrown, his family goes on a picnic at the Père Lachaise. His sister had given birth a few years before to a boy whom they name in honour of him. After the picnic, they allow the boy to pour a bottle of his uncle's favourite wine on the gravestone, to celebrate the cynic who chose to believe.
A/N: I should not be writing when I'm supposed to be listening to my Math professor. Cookies to anyone who notices the subtle Brick reference.