Disclaimer: I didn't create any of the Les Mis characters; I just had fun with the invention of their reincarnates.
Author's Note/Warnings: Warnings for homophobia and for mentions of arousal, though nothing really graphic; also, the usual mentions of blood and death that go with the barricade. Enjoy!
Part Seven: Mirror, Mirror
"Stand, citizens!"
They try. They stand by him as long as Courfeyrac could ask, until the National Guard is pouring over the barricade, until less than half of them are still capable of wielding weapons. They stand with him until he falls, blood slick on his hands, too weak and disoriented to hold a gun.
He still tries to rally them. He tries to scream out orders, pleas, hopes for a better future, truths about their disastrous present. If he can make just one man see, even now… if he can turn the tide for just one more moment, give Enjolras and the rest just a few spare seconds to live, to breathe, to plan…
A few seconds more or less made no difference. The voice is softly amused, filling the air around him, and it seems too quiet for him to be hearing it as clearly as he is. I've shown you before, but it's always fun to show you again.
Courfeyrac screams, a sound of agony and denial ripped from the core of his being as his memory provides him with images he never wanted to see once, let alone multiple times. His friends, his dearest friends, dying one by one, the light and life fading from their eyes, and he is left alone.
A shade, a ghost, a wandering vagrant in a sea of corpses, and he doesn't want this. He doesn't want to go through this again. Wasn't once enough? Wasn't twice through this hell payment for the sins he committed?
All right, maybe not payment enough for all of them, but surely to do this to him again and again and again…
We could always come up with something a little more… creative.
The voice is mocking, taunting, and Courfeyrac would face the monster if he could. Dead men don't move, though, and his body is seemingly most decidedly dead, even if his heart and soul are not.
Most decidedly not. The amusement in the creature's voice is more genuine now, and red eyes peer down at him, framed by shadows that flow and drip but generally hold a human shape. Your spirits are too stubborn to die so easily, and I thank them profusely for that. But if you're really tired of seeing only death, of fighting only against the profound knowledge of defeat and loss and pointlessness…
Courfeyrac blinks, staring up at the bright orange halo of a streetlamp. Why is he on the ground? What happened? Where—?
"Courfeyrac?" Marius leans into his field of vision, the other man's face pinched, a mixture of concern and throttled amusement fighting for dominance of his features. "Courfeyrac, are you all right?"
"Quite well." Shaking his head, Courfeyrac sits up slowly, rubbing at his head and elbows, trying to remember the fall that led to his lying in the street. Rain is turning to ice on the street and the sidewalks, winter's teeth just beginning to show, and he had been careless in the placement of his feet. The carelessness hadn't been entirely his fault—his attention had some assistance in its distraction, and he looks around for the woman before sighing and accepting Marius' proffered hand to haul himself to his feet. "The only thing very badly damaged is my dignity, and that will heal given silence on your part and the finding of a beauty of equal magnitude to the one who nearly slew me here later in the night."
"Courfeyrac, you're…" Marius sighs, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. "You're really quite impossible sometimes."
"I would have thought your being smitten by a beauty would have made you more rather than less appreciative of my distractions." Wiping his clothes off as well as he can, Courfeyrac straightens and begins walking again.
"Ursula is more than a simple beauty. She's—"
Courfeyrac stops listening as Marius launches into another speech about the joys and assets of his object of affection. He still nods in all the right places, having heard variations on this epistle several times before, and he does nothing to discourage the other man. Let Marius have his fun. If he does find this girl some day, Courfeyrac only hopes that either she can live up to Marius' rather exceptional expectations or that Marius will take his disappointment gently.
They join the others in the Café Musain, and Jehan spends several minutes encouraging Marius in a way that only a poet could, turning Marius' heartfelt but clumsy phrases into clever compliments and witticisms. Joly and Bossuet join in, and the conversation somehow devolves into Marius trying to defend his lady's honor while not disavowing the compliments that the others give her.
They're really quite… cute together, aren't they?
The words are innocent enough, but there's a mocking malice beneath the surface that sets Courfeyrac's teeth on edge as he turns to see the speaker. No one is there, though, or at least no one that appears to have been talking to him, and so Courfeyrac shakes his head and moves closer to Enjolras and Combeferre. The center of the meeting, the eye of the growing storm, and Enjolras should begin speaking soon.
All of your friends were such beauties. The blond angel, the radiant poet, the stoic fighter—
"Bossuet is near bald and Grantaire could only be called beautiful by someone with a cruel sense of humor or a… unique sense of taste." Spinning toward the voice, Courfeyrac hisses out the words, cautious to use a tone that won't carry. The last thing he wants is for his friends to hear only one unflattering side of this conversation. "Their looks are of no matter to me, though. It's the ideas…"
There is no one to talk to, though. Only a hint of eyes, red and baleful, in the shadows of the table, and even those are gone when he looks twice. The hair on the back of his neck prickles, and Courfeyrac looks around uncertainly. Someone is speaking to him.
Am I? Or are you speaking with yourself? Why does it bother you that I praise their beauty?
"Because they are much more to me than pretty faces. They are very dear friends, and to reduce them to simple aspects of beauty—"
"I would do him in a heartbeat." I believe those were the words, at least… perhaps Enjolras could help to enhance your memory…
Courfeyrac's eyes catch on Enjolras, and for one painful, helpless moment he can't look away. The words ring in his head, the language foreign, the phrasing bizarre and confusing, but he understands what it means. He sees Enjolras, wearing something only half-decent, displaying the fencer's muscles in his arms, and he can feel his body responding to it in an uncomfortably familiar way.
"No." Tearing his eyes away, Courfeyrac tries to suppress the fierce burn in his cheeks and the terrible ache in his groin. He likes women. He has ever since he first learned of the concept of love, and he's had enough lovers to more than prove his enthusiasm for the fairer sex. To consider a man in the same light—to consider Enjolras in that light, when the revolutionary would seemingly much rather die in a street riot rather than have anything at all to do with romance—is… disquieting, to say the least. "I don't… what did you do to me?"
I did nothing. Wide red eyes stare at him from a face that is nothing more than a collection of shadows; arms of black emptiness wrap around him, but there is a prick of claws where the creature's fingers touch that speaks to more form than just shadow. It's who you are, Courfeyrac. Or should I say Cori? So proud of yourself, so determined not to be ashamed, but proud of what? Proud of viewing all your friends as potential objects to fuck? Proud of seeing in Enjolras not the burning leader but a beautiful virgin? Of seeing Combeferre as so much potential fun, all that knowledge of the world locked away in his head? Of contemplating how often Joly and Laigle have fucked, and whether they would ever want another partner? Of hearing Jehan's verses of love, and wondering what experience the young poet might have?
It's the mention of Jehan that gives him the strength to break away from the creature. Every other name has twisted versions of familiar faces, broken versions of familiar names that are overlaid with it, a cacophony of words and feelings flooding his heart and head, but Jehan is only himself. Whatever nightmare, whatever poison the shadow-creature has managed to put into him, it has no reference for Jehan, and the moment of silence is Courfeyrac's moment to move.
The creature is gone when he turns to face it, though, and his friends are staring at him in astonishment and confusion.
"Courfeyrac?" Enjolras speaks first, taking a hesitant step toward him. "What happened? Are you well?"
"I—" Words catch in his throat, and it's all he can do not to move self-consciously to try to cover his body's betrayal. His clothing should hide his uncomfortable erection. "Have any of you noticed anything… odd about lately?"
"Other than you?" Grantaire lifts his bottle off the table in a silent salute. "It's good to know I'm not the only deviant in the group, though. Not the only one damned for his defects, or am I reading your salute to us incorrectly?"
(No, no, no, I'm sorry, this isn't how it's supposed to be, this isn't what it's like—)
The words are incomprehensible, but the meaning is clear even so, the sorrow and frustration and guilt and determined denial of guilt, and Courfeyrac backs away from his friends as he presses his hands to his head.
What's happening to him?
Why is there a stranger's voice in his mind, in his heart, and why does his body respond so eagerly to this demon's thoughts and emotions?
His name is Cori. The shadows whisper the words to him. And you can hurt him, if you will it. You can drive him away, make him pay, and perhaps if you do it well enough your friends will forgive this… indiscretion.
"They wouldn't…" Shaking his head, Courfeyrac looks through sweat-dampened locks of hair at his friends. They stand frozen, staring at him in various stages of shock and horror. "No. That's not how it would be. They're my friends. They're… we're… Les Amis wouldn't turn on each other for something so… so…"
Petty as the desire to violate them? Innocent as the urge to damn yourself and them for something as simple as fleshly fulfillment? The voice is a purr in his ear.
"We accept Grantaire." The words are a whisper, the best he can cobble together, drowning in the unaccustomed disdain in Enjolras' eyes, the dawning understanding in Jehan's sidelong glance, the fury in Combeferre's glance.
He loves purely, cleanly, for the spirit, not the flesh. You, though… it's clear enough where you stand.
Shadow-fingers grope up his thigh, latch onto his traitorous prick through his clothing, and Courfeyrac howls in dismay and frustration as he fights against the hands.
There is nothing to fight, though. There is only shadow, sweeping across the Musain, drowning out the light. There is only the other in his head, shouting, crying, cursing, ashamed and furious and frightened all at once, and Courfeyrac can't stand it. Not on top of his own confusion and anger, and he strives with all his might to separate the foreign voice from himself.
It hurts. It is agony like he's never known before, worse than any of the street riots he's been in, worse than the pain of dying on the barricade.
And Courfeyrac realizes, through a haze of memories of fighting and dying, that what he's seen can't be real, can't be true, never happened, because it doesn't fit. They died on the barricade in June; he wouldn't have been talking with Marius at the Musain about Ursula like this when winter was just beginning.
He never felt a stirring of lust toward his fellow Amis, and they wouldn't have damned him even if he did. Some things were more important than who a man fucked—many things, most things, and if he'd had time and opportunity to examine what was happening, what was being said, to see through the façade that the shadow-monster made for him…
He tries to apologize. He tries to find the other, the one he hurt in his desperation and confusion.
He sees… things. Walls of pale cream, pure glass covered by strange straight blinds that make the sun into slashes of light, gadgets strewn everywhere made from material he couldn't even name.
He sees his hands, shaking, clenched into bedsheets made from an unfamiliar material, dyed a deep burgundy color.
He feels terror and shame, pain and nausea, a confusion even deeper than his own, and he tries desperately to reach out to the other. To Cori, if the shadow has named this man correctly.
Cori shoves him away, an understandable act of self-preservation, and Courfeyrac feels his hold on consciousness fade.
Hopefully they will be able to talk, next time, because Courfeyrac doubts very much that this young man is his enemy.
There's a much more obvious enemy, but Courfeyrac has no idea how one goes about fighting shadows.
XXX
Cori manages to make it to the toilet before throwing up the remains of his midnight pizza, though just barely. He spends a long, painful minute afterwards retching, his empty stomach grinding against itself, determined that there must be something in his digestive system responsible for the utterly debilitating nausea and pain lancing through him.
He knows that there isn't, though, and eventually his stomach catches up to his mind and gives up. Vomiting could work with normal poisons, but not the ones injected into your heart and soul by society. The humiliation, the guilt, the terror, the shame, they're what he needs to expel from his body, and he could spend eternity locked in the bathroom and never come any closer to cleansing himself.
He wishes Con were here, to pat his back and stroke his hair and gently reprimand him for whatever foolish thing he did to leave him in this situation.
He's glad that Con isn't here, because he doesn't want to explain what happened to the other man. Who said Monday morning summer classes weren't good for anything?
Cori's not even sure he could explain to himself what happened. It's been years since he had nightmares about his sexuality—the better part of a decade since he went through anything that left him as shaky and debilitated as this. He can't think of any reason for what happened, either. No one's said anything to him recently. He had a good night with the others, with Eric's Independents. They planned the revolution, settling their short-term goals, re-evaluating their long-term goals, and when everyone but Eric and Con were weary of discussing the topic they ordered a pizza, some beer, and whiled away a few more hours of the night just enjoying each other's company.
Maybe it was too good a night. Maybe he enjoyed himself too thoroughly, and that was why his subconscious had to resurrect old fears of rejection.
But why would he think Con would turn on him? Con's bi, and seemingly completely at ease with the identity. And Eric… Eric's asexual, and has spoken more than once about the importance of LGBT acceptance. There's no reason for him to think Eric would look on him any differently…
Except it wasn't Eric in the dream. It wasn't Con. The men looked similar to them, hauntingly similar, and they carried themselves like his friends, and there was something deeper than skin and more important than names that told him they were his companions, his allies, his dear comrades, but they were… different.
They went by different names.
He went by a different name.
Not a normal name, not in the dream; not a first name, he thinks, though it was the name he went by most commonly, and the word dances tantalizingly out of his reach, as dreams tend to do. How had it started?
(Cori?)
He shivers, bending over the toilet again as another wave of nausea and pain stabs through his gut as he tries to rifle through the fragmenting memories of the dream. He will have the name, though. Had it begun with a Ke? A Ko?
(Courfeyrac. My name is Courfeyrac, Cori, and I am terribly sorry that I allowed myself to be tricked into hurting us.)
Cori whimpers as his stomach clenches again, and he bends over the toilet. His hands rise without his really commanding them to, press tight against his ears, and he's not entirely certain why they do so. Courfeyrac. That was the name he had used in the dream. That was the name the shadow-creature called him by.
(Not you, me. Well… us, I suppose. You and I, me and you, the past and the present, and it's really much easier to think logically and work this all out when we're awake and conscious in the real world without that monstrous thing bearing down on us.)
"I'm not hearing anything." His hands are pressed so tightly to his ears that it's almost painful. "I am not going to have a conversation with a dream-self. I'm not."
There's no response.
There shouldn't be a response.
He's glad there's not a response, because it means he's not stark raving mad.
So why is he disappointed?
The disappointment doesn't get to last long, though. His phone trills, the happy, energetic sound that indicates a text message from someone that he hasn't bothered to give their own ring-tone to yet.
Struggling to his feet, he forces down the last of the nausea, splashes some water on his face, and goes to dig the phone out of whatever crevice of the couch it crawled into.
Dreams and dream-names can wait until later. He's got a very busy real life to attend to, and quite possibly some reaffirming of his satisfaction with his sexuality to do later tonight.
