'It's over,' Enjolras didn't say, taking the warm mug from my hand. That economy of phrase was purely his, a natural extension of meaning in the absence of voice. 'Victory is ours,' he had cried in endless clandestine meetings, perfect lips never forming the words, 'we will die.'
It was spring, and though I remembered him leaning out my window before dawn in a grey December, I could no longer feel the chill of knowing that I'd reached out and lost him. The months of brief intimacies disentangled us more gradually from that morning, and we learned what we wouldn't miss when it was gone.
I had learned how he took his coffee and couldn't feel the seeping cold. He, perhaps, knew that I poured my first glass of wine at noon, of absinthe at seven, and was capable of passing out or walking home at midnight. I still don't know what he sees through the haze of the Cause in his eyes, but I know how little he thinks of my dim and grape-stained world.
'Etienne,' I never told him, 'my world has its wonders.' A liquid shield so that the fire of your glare does not burn my eyes, nor your absent touch mark my skin. The scent of ground coffee stays no longer than it should, and my ears do not ring with words that never crossed your lips.
And I, I who spent words like the worthless air they were, nodded and sipped my coffee and pretended not to hear him, so he left and came back because we couldn't help it.
'It's over,' he doesn't say, but the erratic musket-fire speaks for him. Enjolras predicted so well the grammar and phrase of it and missed the import entirely. Likely he's down there mustering the troops and missing it even now. I could see him leaning over a musket this fine summer's afternoon if I cared to raise my head. Far more pleasant to lie upstairs in a pool of sunlight and brandy and not open my eyes.
And I, I who spent words like the worthless air they are, have learnt from his lips some discretion, and my ravings told no one where their leader spends his nights or what I hear in his speeches. Surely he can see nothing through the guns' smoke, and I have let my eyes close to the sight.
'Victory is ours,' he shouts somewhere below, and I do not answer, 'we will die.'