This was going to be the first part of a oneshot which had Le Amis popping up and being badass revolutionaries throughout history, not only because I love reincarnation AUs but also because I'm a bit of a history geek. I soon figured out that the oneshot idea is entirely unfeasible and reading it would be like getting punched in the face by a huge block of AU history text, so I'm splitting it up. Hopefully I'll end up writing the other segments sometime soon. If they take anything like how long this took, it might be a bit – I researched this perhaps a little too stringently. Ah well.
Historical context – set during the 'July Days', which was a series of demonstrations held against the government in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg), and which preceded the eventual 1917 revolution in October.
And for everything king that died, oh they would crown another.
And it's harder than you think,
telling dreams from one another.
Daniel in the Den, Bastille
Dawn finds Pavel Smirnovich a restless creature. Awoken by nightmares, his memories glistering in a blood-soaked sepia, he stands up, stretching out gangly limbs deadened by sleep. He yawns, and slowly starts dressing himself in trousers and the only overcoat he owns, needing the fresh air to whisper away the cobwebs and dark corners still lingering in his head.
He tucks his toes into thick laced boots that are bruised and worn, making a minor effort to push his heels in at the back while leaving his laces untied, wondering with a distracting interest whether he'll be able to pick out any constellations tonight. Last night he'd concerned himself with the stars and their heavenly formations, gazing at the structures of Draco, of Ursa Minor, jotting their positions down in a neat precise hand in his notebook, and following this up with a short verse he penned on an inspired whim. Cheered with the possibility of taking advantage of his twilight stroll, he stuffs his notebook and pencil into his pocket, and leaves, his footsteps soft-footed so as not to wake the other lodgers in the cramped house they share.
Nevsky Prospekt, the street on which he has lodged for more than two years now, is rarely ever empty. Even with the shops shuttered up for the night, people still linger on the clean-swept pavement, some striding, some trudging, some sauntering aimlessly, with hands thrust deep into pockets or swinging a cane before them, either giving Pavel a quick curt nod before turning their eyes to their companions or to their feet. Pavel smiles amiably at each one, and with his mind on the heavens, he contemplates their earthly inheritance of starlight as he walks, shaking off the melancholy that comes with the cloak of long-past dreams.
He finally reaches the Embankment, glancing up at the thick solitary shadow of the statue that dominates the square, the figure made eldritch and unrecognisable by the night, kingly features marred with moonshine. The bronzed Peter sat astride his horse stares out imperiously at the river Neva which hisses past, and, finding the edge of the pavement by which to rest himself on, Pavel follows his gaze.
Without intention, he thinks of another summer night, years back, when the air along Rue de la Chanvrerie was murky and swallowed by gun smoke, when the sky was starless and he breathed out his last amongst the cobblestone, his ribs rattling out sharp gulps of air and his body bleeding sluggishly, staining the ground beneath his weight. He had felt his soul whimper and gasp in its cage of flesh, and he had thought that if he had died for anything, if it had any purpose at all, at least he had died for something meaningful, thinking of the red flag fluttering in the faint wind atop the barricade.
In the cold of Petrograd, his hands too cramped to write and the light too poor, he thinks of the last memories he had in a world shattered with mortal dark; how he had thought of the fighter, decked in a daring waistcoat and a streetwise smile, playing dominoes amidst the wine-fug of Corinthe; the centre of them all, the man with the quick grin, the easy laughter and teasing jokes, with time for everyone and always with a couple of sous in his pocket for the child who had adopted them as his elder brothers. How he had thought of the contemplative grace of the guide, the philosopher, of his belief in the progress of man, of the quiet and tender songs which he sang under his breath.
He had finally thought of the leader, their marble priest composed of glorious passion and terrible gracious wrath, before the world had rippled and folded over him, and he found it hard to breathe.
Pavel remembers, casting his eyes out over the dark waters of the Neva, a whole lifetime away from the paved streets of Rue de la Chanvrerie, how he had tried gulping down air and had swallowed blood instead, how he had breathed in and out with words of revolution murmured to the pitch-black sky, thinking he could perhaps see a glimmer of stars, until at last he wasn't breathing at all.
Pavel thinks of dying. Thinks of his friends and wonders what they look like now.
He sits lost in thought until the cold drives him back to seek the comfort of his bed.
He sleeps little, but nonetheless is up early. Dressing himself with his usual lack of a stylish grace, and carelessly eats a meagre breakfast of butter scraped over the crust of the last of his bread, his attention more on the book in his hands. After he's dusted the crumbs from his shirt, he shrugs on his coat and steps out onto the Prospekt, humming to himself as he goes.
He makes his way to join up with some of his fellow clerks from the office, the group of them sparse at this hour, meeting under the stately shadow of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan which stretches out and limbers up faintly despite the absence of a forceful sun. It's a pallid day, with a stony sky and half-caste morning that doesn't offer up the isolated sun it promised, and Nikolai Apollonovich is caught up in complaining about the weather when Pavel arrives: "It's so inconsistent!" he grumbles, scratching at the edge of his moustache and pulling on the ends absent-mindedly. Piskaryov, shy, but like Pavel an animated lover of poetry, agrees by nodding, rubbing his mittened hands together. Pavel can see that both Piskaryov and Pirogov, his housemate, who is at this moment vocally declaring his scorn against the weather, have come from their lodgings without even considering putting on an ushanka to protect their ears from the bitter wind. He tugs his own further down over his hair with a private satisfaction.
He shifts from foot to foot as they wait for the others to arrive, and wonders what it must be like, to be a newer soul than his, or else a more forgetful one, a bright and shimmering thing that doesn't remember any revolutions other than this one. He wonders why he always remembers, each time around. Why he always dreams.
Their group swells as the sun behind its grey cataracts rises, and they begin to make their way down the Nevsky Prospekt to gather with the main throng of the demonstration that has amassed, shoulders bumping with factory workers and clerks and servants and socialists, the Bolshevik supports rending the air with a cascade of words saturated with an unquenchable belief in the rights of the people. They wave copies of Marx and Engel's manifesto that has imbued them with so much zeal for the future they see on an immanent horizon, and some clutch copies of Pravda in their fists, the leaves of the newspaper flapping and buffeted by the wind.
Pavel is not an outspoken man, more often prone to delicacy and contemplation than revolutionary fervour – Pirogov had initially brayed with laughter this morning when he saw Pavel, clapping him on the back with a meaty, ungloved hand, "Here's little Pasha! Thought you'd be hiding in your rooms with your nose in a book. Never imagined we'd tear you away from your beloved Pushkin," and Pavel had flushed awkwardly and lowered his eyes. But he cheers now, letting himself be engulfed by the sheer humanity of the moment. The sound of people exchanging words excitedly, vocalisations against the government, against the price rises, how many rubles it costs to buy bread these days, jubilant slurs being shouted up against Lvov and Konovalov and Kerensky, those officials no better than the Tsar that had gone before them. Somewhere further back in the crowd, someone starts up a mocking chastushka and the words are picked up with great gusto, and Pavel can hear the start-up octaves of a bayan, a cheer going up at the inclusion of the accordion, the singers responding by getting louder and making up increasingly lewd lyrics.
The Bolsheviks that are fore-fronting the demonstration shout the loudest, proclaim the most daring statements, seem the bravest of them all. Dotted around are members of the red guard, and there are some armed soldiers who have joined in solidarity of the march, but for the most part, the masses are unarmed and content to be so, demonstrating with a force that comes with numbers and a strength of will, a fearlessness that comes with feeling invincible.
It never lasts. Pavel should know this by now.
Someone shouts aloud, a warning cry, and the singing stops abruptly as they watch the arrival of the soldiers swiftly moving in on horseback, their officers uniforms without creases and immaculate with attention; following them, the infantry taking their positions on foot in their khaki tunics, the brass buttons gleaming dimly in the low watery light. There are more than enough of them to subdue the crowd, and by the side of each one hangs a polished sword or the sleek shape of their service rifles. Pavel clenches his fingers into his palm, the skin crimping against itself like the ragged puckering of a wound. There is are words cowering in his throat in an old mother tongue, and he swallows them down as he sees the troops advance towards them.
Then there is a universal cry as the horses charge and people scatter out of their path, the tat-tat-tat of gunfire as the military try and disperse the crowd. Disorientation rises upon him like the rush of a sea swell, and he can hear people screaming (in Russian, his own tongue, but still, he is momentarily submerged in the same shouts spoken in another language: S'il vous plait!, Arrêtez-le! ), taking in both at the same time, not quite sure which is the right one.
Power to the soviets! Nikolai Apollonovich shouts, and Pavel, swerving in his movements to avoid being knocked over by the flank of an erratic horse, sees him dragging an officer from his mount by gripping onto his tunic, fingers digging into the shoulder boards to try and get a grip.
Someone pushes Pavel as they run past, and he catches sight of the muzzle of a gun aimed at his heart by a black-hundreds officer. He doesn't think then, reacting with a blind necessity and hands that remember how to defend themselves, gripping the barrel of the gun directed at him and levering himself so he wrenches it out of the officer's hands, before swinging it around again to crack him over the head. The officer crumples, alive but out cold, not destined to be his murderer today.
The motion has shaken him, and when another rushing demonstrator bumps into him, Pavel nearly trips, losing his grip on the rifle, his boots sliding on the leaves of paper that litter the ground, abandoned copies of the Manifesto and Pravda printed with ink and footprints as people trampled over them in their hurry to flee.
He steadies himself, but his spectacles have been unhooked from around his ears, and they drop down onto the pavement, his vision fragmented and grotesque as he tries to frantically catch sight of them. Another person pushes him, and there is shouting in his ears as he is knocked to his knees, scraping his hands as he catches himself before he hits his head, sensing the sharp, rising pain as the worn fabric of his trousers tear at the knees and the exposed flesh is skinned an angry red upon the stone, dusting it with blood. There is gunfire over him, a punctuated metronome indenting on the air, and there's a hideous dance of sound where a gun goes off and then someone shouts, then there is a refrain of the same.
The world has gone blurry, and Pavel thinks he is going to die again, on the eighteenth of July, this time on his knees with old remembered defiances on his lips ("Vive la France! Vive l'avenir! "), and the terror of dying shaking in his chest that never changes no matter how many lives he's lived.
Then there are hands clenching around his shoulders, yanking him up by the dark fabric of his overcoat, thrusting his spectacles into his scratched palms, the frame bent but the glass miraculously unshattered.
"Come on, tovarishch," the stranger speaks with an urgency but his voice is not unkind. "Save your fight for another day."
Pavel sways, the ground coming back into a crisp focus as he hooks his glasses around his ears, his clenched fingers digging into the stranger's arm like the talons of crows. The man is pulling him away from the main street, doing the running for both of them, his hand a vice around his arm, before Pavel's legs remember how the motions of movement work, and then they're running together, solidarity and the grip on each other's clothing keeping them close. Away from the crash of noise and the police and the black-hundreds militia and the Menshevik soldiers, off the Nevsky Prospekt and darting down into the nearby Liteyny Prospekt.
The stranger directs them down a smaller alley that's slunk down between the flat walls of a tailor's shop and a moneylender's. Pavel is breathless and aching when they finally stop, his knees stiff with pain, the flesh on his skinned palms burning, but burning without fire, and his heartbeat commandeering all sound in his head.
"Have you been hit, tovarischch?"
The world is slowly quietening, and the stranger sounds concerned, using that familiar word again, tovarischch, comrade, forming an unspoken fellowship between the two of them. Pavel looks up, blinking rapidly, bleary eyes stained with a glaze of damp from the wind and the smoke, before his vision clears like daybreak and he exclaims in a delighted shock:
"Combeferre!?"
The man, young like they always seem to be when they meet, doesn't recognise him for a second. He frowns, his forehead crinkling as though he's been struck with a sudden headache. His face is that of a stranger, proud features that are new and alien, a grace in his movements and a deep Moscow accent, dark hair tucked under his fur hat and trimmed facial hair that comes down from his sideburns to frame his chin and link up with the moustache which sits above his upper lip.
Pavel knows it's him.
The man he once knew by the name of Combeferre looks at him – and then really looks, beyond the small mousy features of man who still has the vestiges of childish youth about him, a thicket of corkscrew curls let to grow unclipped, the grubby overcoat and his skinned hands dotted with ink, beyond his lilting accent and watery eyes framed by bent spectacles – and sees his soul, the lightest shade of them all. The gentlest of the nine of them.
He looks and sees the poet, the man who was in love with everything, and says his name like he can't quite believe it.
"Jean Prouvaire?"
And then Pavel lets out a huff of happy laughter as arms are wrapped around him and Combeferre, and that won't be his name anymore, a soul with a different face and a different name, is saying "Bozhe moi, Jehan," his languages grating against each other, using a French name in a Russian tongue, his lives for a moment spilling over into each other. Pavel, or Jean Prouvaire, or whoever he will be the next time they meet, smiles with a gentleness that is never sullied with the passing of years, and hugs his friend back, digging his fingers tighter into his woollen greatcoat.
"Combeferre," he says again, his voice softer and brighter, vocalising a smile, and the soul who was always the philosopher gives a smothered laugh, still not relinquishing Pavel from his grip. It's been a long time since they crossed paths. A good few turns of the wheel.
"It's Grigoriy these days," his friend croaks out, speaking in French and the Russian names sounding out of place. "Grigoriy Belikovich. I haven't heard Combeferre since… oh mon Dieu Jehan… I was worried we'd lost you to the aether… we hadn't caught up with you… I haven't seen you, not since…"
He stops, and doesn't say it. He's thinking of a starless night broken by the choked inhale of a sudden despair when they take a role call and one name is missing, listen to a shout of defiance and the report of gunshots even when he is readying a white flag to exchange one prisoner for another. The soul who is now named Grigoriy Belikovich, but who remembers being Nicolas Combeferre, is hearing again that terrible thundering of guns like a localised storm and knowing what dreadful act it proclaimed.
He crushes Pavel to him with the memories of years ago a bright tyranny in his head.
"I am so sorry Jehan."
He doesn't know what he's apologising for.
"It was a long time ago," Pavel says quietly. "Lifetimes ago. I barely remember it."
He's lying. He remembers every second. They always seem to remember dying the most vividly. Dying young and with a hope for the future unbroken in their fragile hearts.
"You were alone," Grigoriy says into Pavel's shoulder, and his voice is deeper than it used to be, but he shapes every word with care as he always has, a clear enunciation and a clarity of speech in every syllable. "I heard them execute you. And I couldn't even bring your body back to Corinthe." His tone strays between a desolate sorrow and a mournful fierceness, a glimmer of his rare capacity for anger. "We couldn't even give you that small honour."
"I am sorry Jehan," he repeats, and he sounds weary. Tired, rusted down. Pavel wonders how many decades he's been thinking of their reunion so he can reassure himself Jean Prouvaire was reborn like the rest of them.
"I have never blamed you," the soul who was once called Jean Prouvaire murmurs, "There has never been anything to blame."
Grigoriy straightens slowly, unbending his spine but keeping his hands on Pavel's shoulders. There is a wisp of a smile on his face, affection flicking like candle flame in his eyes.
"Bless you, Jean Prouvaire," he says. "You were always the kindest of us all."
"That's an old name now, Grigoriy Belikovich," Pavel reminds him. Yet he misses that name in a way, likes the sound of it on his tongue, the way his mouth shapes it, the old language flooding back the more he recalls it being used: his name being shouted by his friends in laughing tones, in exclamation, in bemusement, drunk with wine or humour or the thrill of revolution.
"Indeed." Grigoriy gives a nostalgic sigh, letting go of Pavel's shoulders and letting his hands hang by his side. "From older times. Shame we have not moved past them."
"The world has changed, surely?"
"Men have only got better at killing their brothers. That is not progress. We are still not free."
"You sound like you've been in the wars," Pavel says softly. There is only pity in his eyes as he presses Grigoriy's hand with his own.
Grigoriy gives a harsh murky laugh, and his humour is all hollowed out and still as stagnant water. For a moment, he looks like a soldier, his posture regimented into a sharp-edged preciseness, before he breathes out and returns to himself again.
"I have been," he murmurs, staring off into a distance unknown, filled with trenches and without humanity, barely a glimpse of the hope for the civilization he is always searching for. He returns his gaze to Pavel. "Things change so much faster these days than they used to. Everyone's filled with so much anger."
"The words of an old man."
"We've been old men for a long time, Jehan."
Grigoriy smiles wryly, and then shakes himself out of his melancholy. He clasps Pavel's upper arm again with a genuine expression of happiness. "Come. I have lodgings not far from here, Ligovsky Prospekt. We should lay low in case the police are circling the area."
Pavel nods in agreement, and they make their way out of the alley, casting out glances as they go, on the lookout for any troops who would attempt to apprehend them. They don't speak much as they walk, more wary of their surroundings, and they walk briskly in a tense silence until they get to Grigoriy's lodgings.
They take their shoes off at the front door and tramp up a flight of stairs, the wood worn and querulous, to the upstairs rooms. The conversation flows quickly then, curious questions and exclamations flowing easily, old jokes and memories tumbling from their lips, darting with ease in and out of throwaway interruptions as Grigoriy serves them both some of yesterday's borsch and heats up a samarov to provide them with tea.
When he is asked, Pavel tells him about his lives after Paris, his growing up in Meerut and Canudos, sketching over the details of the rebellions he's seen, carefully avoiding any talk of how each time he has died young like they always seem to. He instead lavishes a happy attention on his early years in this lifetime, his childhood in Orsk, how it's so close to the Urals river that when the weather's good he can sit by the banks under the dappled cover of tree branch and watch how the light strikes off the flat of the water and turns it white. Grigoriy smiles at that, the way Pavel's quiet voice sudden becomes a grinning lyrical enthusiasm, and tells him that he hasn't changed over the years. He sounds gladdened at this.
Grigoriy in turn talks about standing by Enjolras' side as they fought against Confederates at Sharpsburg, of dying by his side at Gettysburg, of his life after that in the reservation camps of South Dakota. He talks coldly and without much feeling of his conscription to the war this lifetime, of the battles at Galicia and Przemyśl, of all the people he's met only to see them die hours later, of how he's not sure how innocent the good are anymore, not after what he's seen.
And then he lifts himself out of the dark road of this thoughts, and moves the conversation pragmatically away from the war so fresh in all their minds. The two of them talk of politics and poetics, of socialism and society and of the souls of the others, the rest of the nine of them, some who have synced up to find each other this time round. It's a rare wonderful thing when they're all found together as they were on the barricades, but Pavel's seen some of the others around; they're born wherever they are needed, and often they meet up in groups of two or three, recognising each other and quickly rekindling their old friendship.
He had theorised out loud, perhaps overcome by the romantic notion of the thought, to the man who had formerly been Grantaire as they had sat together drinking jaljira and kallu in Meerut, that they were spirits of revolution, that they were born over and over because they were always needed, because until the world no longer needed rebellions it would always need people to stand up in the name of liberty and equality. Grantaire had snorted into his drink with the shadows of old scars across his face, and had told him that they were just cursed, that was all.
As what little daylight there was outside dies, Grigoriy tells him with enthusiasm about the others who have turned up – he speaks to him of the fighter, Bazykin, and how he still never backs down from a brawl if he sees a chance to join in; of the doctor Vesely and the luckless Oryol, still making their way through existence as inseparable companions, lodging together on Nevsky Prospekt ("How you haven't bumped into them, I'll never know!"). And of course, of the resolute Aleksandr, handsome and inspired, just and indomitable, who like them has traversed the revolutionary apocalypse and knows its forms with intimacy, who still retains his eternal passion for the ideal of liberty that makes him a leader they would follow anywhere.
"There is another revolution coming, you know," Grigoriy says placidly after a companionable silence, refilling his cup with hot water. "It's like Paris all over again. You can feel the tensions in the air."
"Then we'll be here to fight for it when it does," Pavel replies. Neither of them have thought to do anything otherwise.
Grigoriy nods with an understanding smile, and raises his cup.
"To the future, Pavel Smirnovich."
He says it in their old tongue, when they had different names and toasted each other in the back room of the Café Musain, but the sound seems natural, right somehow. Pavel raises his glass, and responds in kind, the French flowing easily from his lips.
"To the future."
In case anyone is interested in the study of names; Jean Prouvaire's name is made up of the given name 'Pavel' meaning humble, and the patronymic (like all good Slavic names) of 'Smirnovich', from 'Smirnov' which means peaceful or quiet. Combeferre's name is made up of 'Grigoriy' meaning watchful, and 'Belikovich', from 'Belikov' meaning white, which can be used to denote a clean/pure individual. In the cases of Bazykin (Bahorel), Vesely (Joly), Oryol (Bossuet) and Aleksandr (Enjolras), their names mean respectively quarrelsome or talkative, cheerful, eagle and defender of men.