Part 2

"Brandy?"

The Baron nodded his assent, and turned back to admiring the dueling pistols displayed above the mantelpiece.

"Impressive, m'sieur."

Gillenormand tightened his lips, and stoppered the decanter.

"Pay it no mind – Worthless trinkets -"

"Colonel... G. Pont..."

"As I said –" he cut his guest off quickly, before the rest of that wretched name could be read from the brass etching. "No matter. They're kept only for ornamentation."

"A relation?" The baron mused, with a gulp of burning liquor.

"Not any that I wish to discuss –" he pushed forward, with the hope that he might be understood, but the baron was not the most tactful of men.

"Ah, a deserter then? Or a spy turned –"

"Certainly not!" Gillenormand snapped, his patience worn thin. "The man carried several... dangerous views of the country – some that I would rather not have spoken of beneath my roof. Not before any... impressionable... offspring, that is."

The sudden glow of understanding in the other's face brought him some relief.

"Forgive me, m'sieur. I assure you, I share your sentiments exceedingly. Exactly where and when the republican ravings of the butcher Robespierre crept into a respectable household, I will never know..."

"Perhaps you had best censor the boy's studies – I've certainly done my best, but still... the occasional mutter, question –"

"Ah, that's how it begins mon ami – just a stirring of the air, and then one morning he'll leap down the stairs waving some latin tome, and screaming over freedom and brotherhood!"

"You appear to speak from experience." Gllenormand muttered with a slight chuckle.

"Indeed." the baron grumbled back. "Don't believe I haven't tried to pound some sense within his head, distract him – Christ above, I even sent him off to a maison de tolérance with five hundred francs in his pocket!"

"And?"

"And my contacts inform me that he immediately walked out the back, and handed every sou to the first gamin he encountered! Imagine, five hundred francs at La Triata's in Paris! Sometimes I wonder if he has any passions besides his darling Patria!"


"We could take some weeks to hunt in Dourdan..." Marius sighed, caressing a pale shoulder as he basked in the glow from blue eyes. "Few would find that suspect."

Enjolras merely answered with a slight smile that sent thrills racing up the boy's spine.

"And how often would we see the outside of the bedchamber?"

He grinned, dark eyes flashing, and propping his head up, mouthed at the other's lips.

"Never."

A thumb slid across his shaved cheek, pulling him closer, and a murmur escaped them both as skin met skin beneath the sheets...

"S-so..." Marius finally gasped between the assaults on his mouth, "Gévaudan, Gascony, P-Pr-Provence – Dieu, arrête ça!" he laughed, squirming as lips and a hot tongue played with the skin of his neck, working down his collarbone and over his chest –

"Oh Mon D – Julien!"

"Calme... Calme maintenant, mon amour..."

Marius quivered at the endearment and held himself still against the boy's mouth, his breath warm on his skin, the embroidery on the cushions scratching gently at his back, his arms wrangling a pillow behind his head and his heart racing, the candlelight playing over their bodies...

Much later, as he played idly with gold curls – utterly addicting – a voice murmured by his neck;

"Come to Paris. Let me show you the greater part of the nation."

In another place, another time, he might have protested, found excuses.

But infatuation is something powerful, particularly to the young, and not even the wisest have ever quite understood it's sway.


The house lay quiet in the blackness, and no one noted Monsieur Gillenormand's twenty-two year old grandson prowling like a footpad through the halls of his own home.

Over the marble mantel, the twin guns lay innocuous in their bed of mahogany and forest velvet. Marius noted the way his hands shook ever so faintly as they lowered the lid gently. Even after so many years, it still seemed a crime to touch them...

The box was removed and wrapped gingerly in a saddle bag between two garish cushions – the only good that would ever come of them, he thought with a smirk, before creeping back into the front hall.

The only evidence of his presence was the outline of dust that remained on the mantel.


Another sin in life, the youth realized gradually, was that life had a habit of making certain aspects of itself quite invisible for those who did not wish to see – and had the francs to pay for the privilege.

It was moments before dawn when their horses reached the capital, as sweat-drenched and exhausted as their riders, and the city which unfurled beneath the sun was already quite awake.

They sold the mounts immediately, twenty francs for each, and proceeded on foot, hands clasped in the semi-dark – one to lead, one to follow.

Neither spoke, terrified of destroying whatever it was, whatever slender, glistening thread connected them.

The city was flooded with the early light by the time they reached the main streets, and beggars choked the boulevards. Several gendarmes on horseback charged by, and Marius felt his belly leap into his mouth as a pair of ragged children were nearly trampled beneath the hooves. No one else on the street seemed to take the slightest notice.

"You see?" Enjolras muttered at his ear. "They don't wish to know unless it touches their own gilded nostrils. Besides, this is nothing. By noon the carriages won't even be able to move through the masses."

They all but waded through the mud left from the previous night's storm caked over the ground like sludge, darting through a shadowed arch that rang with the skitterings of rats and the occasional whimper of some wretch unseen.

"Where are we going – "

"In good time – food first."

A sapphire silk franc purse seemed to materialize in his hands, initials embroidered in silver, and Marius found himself staring mute in mild indignation.

"Is that –"

"Oui." the other replied, smiling slightly. "You must forgive me – you're a light sleeper, and I couldn't resist."

Marius couldn't help but return the grin with a shove.

"Espiègle vous!"

The tease earned him a playful brush of the lips, garnering several strange glances from passersby in their carriages, though the beggars seemed hardly to mind – it was reality to them.

Within the next ten minutes they had procured a couple of rather hard brioches from an old woman near one of the public gardens, and leaned against a brick wall in the sun, chewing determinedly and laughing at their efforts.

Marius had only just managed to tear off a rather large chunk with his teeth and was about to share his victory, when a child's whimper cut through the morning like the scent of blood.

He looked about six years old, but only just – too young to have truly merited receiving the end of a rifle butt at the back of his head.

Fury licked through every vein, yet as he made to come off the wall, a hand seized his arm.

"No."

"But-!"

"Truly. If you go to him now, he'll only spit at you for doing the saving for him."

"But he's only –!"

"Marius, there's no such thing as a child, not among the poor!"

Shaking now, he glanced down at the clump of bread, and slowly allowed his dark eyes to travel back to the small creature lifting himself painfully from the cobbles...

"No –"

"So stop me-!"

"Marius, listen – hand that to him, and he'll bite you like a dog. Throw it in there -"

He nodded at the public fountain not far away. " – and be certain he's watching you."

Moments later, as the child swallowed grimy chunks of wet pastry with the strength of a little wolf, Marius felt a pair of hands seize his own and wrap his arms about broad shoulders, before lips nuzzled his ear.

"You see now, amour?"

TBC

A.N. – Here are the translations, which I apologize for not placing in the last chapter!

mon ami – my friend

maison de tolérance – a brothel

gamin- A street urchin

Dieu, arrête ça! – God, stop it!

Calme... Calme maintenant, mon amour... – Quiet... Quiet now, my love...

Espiègle vous! – You minx!

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