Author's Note: Thank you again to everyone who reviewed! It's a small thing, but it really makes it worth the time and effort it takes to format and post this. I'm absolutely thrilled that people are enjoying it, and chapters should continue to come out on a weekly basis.

Part Eleven: Translation

"Please tell me that there is a good explanation for me no longer enjoying the peace and benefits of REM sleep." Jona yawns for good measure, sliding in next to Con across the table from Grant. "And I know you're going to ignore me again, Grant, but I'd really suggest not using the breakfast buffet. It's incredibly hard to keep food decently sanitary at a buffet, and they don't seem to actually care—"

"I'm sorry to wake you, yes, there is a good explanation, and if it will help you concentrate I promise neither of us will go within ten feet of the breakfast buffet. I think that covers everything you were worried about." Grant struggles not to shift in his seat. Waiting for the replies from everyone about who did and didn't speak French had been difficult. Waiting in the booth for the two who ostensibly speak it to appear had been close to torture, and he's already pretty much used up all the patience his sleep-deprived mind had been able to muster. "Now, would you mind if I explained why I wanted you to come?"

"Please." Jona spreads both hands. "Enlighten me."

"All right. So." Grant pauses, trying to sort his idea into the shortest form possible. He puts his hands in his pockets for a moment and then takes them out, his fingers brushing against the flash drive he picked up from Eric. He makes a mental note not to forget it. "You've both noticed that Eric's been really tired and worn-out lately."

"Yeah." Jona nods at him to continue, while Con just continues to watch him with an implacable stare that Grant's finding more and more discomfiting.

"Well, he's been worn out because he's been having nightmares. And he tends to talk in the nightmares—I've noticed it a couple times, but I've never been able to catch what he's saying. Well, after Con talked to me the yesterday I had the idea that I could try to record what he's saying, and maybe that way we'll know what's haunting him."

"That's an odd choice of words." Con blows on his coffee before taking a small sip. "Why say 'haunting'? Why not bothering?"

Grant shakes his head, continuing on. He can't explain to himself why he's certain there's something more to Eric's problem than what a psychiatrist could solve; trying to explain it to Con would be a losing battle from the start. "So last night I decided to try it. I left a recorder I had by his bed, and I got… well, I got a lot of things. But I can't understand any of it, because it's in French. So I tried to find out who spoke French, and that would be the two of you, and I thought that you could help me translate it, and then we can figure out how to help Eric."

Silence descends, and Grant looks between the other two men hopefully.

After a moment, Con sets down his coffee. "Does he know about this?"

"Well…" Grant hesitates a moment before sighing. "No."

"Have you tried just asking him what he's dreaming about?" Con's face is ice-cold, hard to read.

"I did, actually. I think I just about caused him to have a heart attack trying to describe the dreams to me." Grant leaves out the part about asking after he'd already set up the recorder. Sometimes part of the truth is better than the whole truth. "I didn't know what else to do, Con. You said you wanted me to find out what's going on. Well, here's your perfect chance."

"It's… kind of an invasion of his privacy." Jona stares at the tiny recorder as though it could bite him. "I mean, he didn't give us permission to do this."

"It's to help him." Grant can feel his face heating, a combination of shame and frustration. Maybe he hadn't thought this through as well as he thought he had. "He can't talk about it. He's worried that he's going crazy. I don't think he is. I think there's something more going on, and I think we can help figure out what it is."

Jona turns to Con, expression still troubled, and Grant knows that in the end it's going to be Con who decides what happens.

Con's expression shifts, just slightly, and there is suddenly fear in the way his eyes are drawn together, concern in the way his lips turn down, and his hand shakes just slightly as he shoves the recorder back to Grant.

"Play it." The command is chilly, cold, but Grant thinks he can understand, now, the love and the self-sacrifice that lie beneath it.

He rewinds to the start of Eric's speech and presses play.

XXX

"It's definitely French." Con frowns down at the notebook in front of him, where two facing pages have already been devoted to translation. Con's handwriting is neat and precise, the times labeled at the start of most sentences, but every once in a while a shaky line gives silent voice to his distress. "It can't be French. Eric doesn't speak it. And even if he did, he wouldn't speak it like this."

"What do you mean?" Grant cranes his neck to the side, trying to read the latest sentence that Con's translated.

"Yeah." Jona continues to stare at the recorder. "What're you hearing that my poor translation skills are not?"

"He's using some words that I know are archaic. He's using others that I don't know, but I suspect it's because they're archaic. And he's speaking…" Con twists the pen he's been using between two fingers. "I don't know how to describe it. There's a way that people speak when they're native speakers and a way that non-native people tend to speak, and he's speaking like an educated native speaker."

"So what does this all mean?" Raising his eyes to meet Grant's, Jona frowns. "When you said haunted did you really mean haunted? Do you think there's… ghosts or something involved?"

"I don't know." Grant shrugs. "I still don't know. Especially because it still… I mean, it still sounds like Eric. Sure, he's talking about overthrowing a king and he's speaking in ancient French, but there's still… I don't know."

Standing abruptly, Con reaches over to snatch up the recorder. "I need more help. I don't know enough to translate this all on my own."

Grant stands as well, shrugging into his coat. "I'm coming with you."

"I don't need—"

"No." Jona's mouth sets into a stubborn line. "We're all three in this together now. You can't try to cut us out of it. It's too important. Besides, three heads work better than one when trying to figure out the impossible."

Con nods, slowly. "Even if we do come up with a working theory that can explain what's happening, which I'm starting to doubt… he's going to be furious with us. You both know that, right?"

"If it's to help him…" Grant bites his lip, sharply. "If it's to help him, I can handle his anger."

He won't think about other times he's faced Eric's frustration or anger, usually justified and well-earned. He won't think about nightmares, dreams of sleeping through the most important event of his life, of waking to Eric's blood and everything lost. He won't think of playing dominoes, and disappointing a blond-haired, blue-eyed angel with a soul of fire, who only ever asked that Grantaire be as good as the rest of the men who followed him.

(Enjolras…)

Jona's hand is on his elbow, suddenly, and within a half-second Con is on his other side, the two of them keeping him steady as the world spins dizzily.

"All right." Jona's voice is tight with anxiety and fear, but it quickly falls into his doctor-cadence. "What just happened?"

"I… don't know." Grant frowns at his feet. The ground seems steady enough again, and he turns from one of them to the other. "I'm all right. I just… I don't know. That was weird."

"What was weird?" Con's hand tightens on his arm.

"This may be a stupid question." Grant pauses, carefully disentangling Con's fingers from his arm. He doesn't want Con to squeeze any harder and leave Con-shaped bruises on his arm. "And it may have no bearing on anything, but… have you guys been having weird nightmares over the summer?"

XXX

Con sits patiently in his professor's office while the woman plays back the recording again and again, getting perhaps another half-minute further with each repetition. The woman is completely absorbed in her work, her lips moving softly as she murmurs bits of French followed by bits of English or vice versa. Sometimes she shakes her head and rewinds further.

After what seems an interminable amount of time she turns from her computer to him, her blue eyes wide. "Where did you say you found this again?"

"It's a recording of an old record that my parents had. They thought I should be able to translate it for them, and I thought I could, but I was having some trouble, like I said, and…" Con takes a breath, catching his rambling tongue before it can give him away. Lying has never been his strong suit. "It's a radio drama, I think. That's what it sounds like to me, at least. Maybe a Québecan one?"

Professor Bisset snorts in disdain. "The Quebec imposters wish they could speak French like this. This is an impressive early nineteenth-century Parisian impersonation. The political figures being name-dropped, the place names… someone did their homework."

"So you can translate it? All of it?" He tries not to sound too pleading or eager.

"I can certainly translate all that I can hear clearly." She reaches over to press the play button again, allowing the track to continue forward without making any additional notes. "There's some places—like there—that the voice is too faint or muffled. I can definitely help you with the clear parts, because this is bloody fascinating. It's like there's a conversation and we're only getting half of it. Tell me the truth, Con. Where'd you find this?"

"I—" He needs to come up with a better excuse quickly, but he can't seem to manage one, and instead ends up blinking at the woman. "I… can't in good conscience tell you."

"But you can let me listen to it and translate it." Both of Professor Bisset's eyebrows attempt to join her hairline.

"That… actually isn't done completely in good conscience, either, but I'm short on ideas and options." Con finds himself studying his hands intently. He shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't be betraying Eric's trust like this. He shouldn't be flaunting whatever's wrong with Eric to people who have no connection to them at all, but it somehow feels terribly important to know what Eric's saying.

Pursing her lips, Bisset studies him for a few moments, the recorder with Eric's voice speaking words it shouldn't be able to still playing in the background. Finally, she nods. "All right, Conlan. You're one of my best students. That's why I agreed to meet you today. More than that, I think you're one of the best young men at this university. So I'll trust you. I'll translate what I can for you, though what you showed me is an admirable start, and maybe some day you'll trust me enough to tell me who, exactly, Courfeyrac and Combeferre and their mysterious friend are."

His ears are suddenly ringing, the computer monitor shining far too brightly, with an unearthly, alien light that he's never seen before.

Except that's foolish. He's used computers almost since the day he was born, fascinated by the machines that have re-worked much of human civilization in first-world countries. He's spent hours programming them, networking them, building them, and there is nothing odd about the computer.

There is nothing odd about the room, and he is certain, very certain, that he isn't suddenly understanding everything that Eric's saying on the tape with perfect clarity.

"Conlan?" Bisset's hand reaches across the table, resting on his briefly. "Is everything all right?"

"I'm fine." Raising his head to meet her gaze, he offers what he hopes is a reassuring smile. "I just… could you say those names again?"

"Combeferre and Courfeyrac?"

"Should I… know those names?" Con keeps his breathing steady, his eyes focused on the woman across from him.

Bisset makes a thoughtful noise low in her throat. "I suppose it depends. How much do you care about nineteenth century Parisian literature and history?"

"I'm starting to suspect a great deal." Smiling isn't hard, though his heart's beating too quickly and it's hard to keep his eyes focused on just one thing. There are so many gadgets around, so many fascinating machines and possibilities and—

"Well, those names were made famous in a book that featured, among other things, the June Rebellion of 1832 and some of its more… colorful martyrs. They—"

A terrible scream cuts her off, and Con can feel his face pale as he stares down at the tiny recorder emitting the worst sound he's ever heard in his life.

XXX

Grant studies the buildings surrounding them thoroughly before turning back to Jona. "All of the buildings around here have glass in them. All of that glass can be said to be both transparent and reflective. I am not going to try to point out the particular piece of glass that you are spying."

"Well, maybe you shouldn't have tried to make me decide which particular stretch of cultivated grass could properly be described as 'sea green' as opposed to 'olive' or 'lime'."

"Different species of grass have different colors! It's a valid question. It helped kill time." Grant scuffs at some of the offending grass.

"Well, watching you attempt to label and point at all the windows will also kill time." Jona sighs, his smug expression disappearing. "How long's Con going to be in there, anywhere?"

"I don't know. Hopefully not—" Grant smiles as the door swings open. "Speak of the devil, and they shall appear."

Only this devil doesn't look as happy as Grant had expected, and the smile fades from his face as he takes a step back. Con marches up to him, holds out the recorder, and presses play in one smooth motion.

He knows what's going to happen, and he snatches at the device but he isn't fast enough to cut off the sound in its entirety. He shivers despite the warmth of summer, remembering Eric's face last night as he woke, remembering the fear and terror of being yanked from sleep into wakefulness by that horrible noise.

Con speaks, a slew of angry, accusatory words that Grant can't understand because they're not in English.

"I don't speak French." He smiles bitterly. "That's why we're here, remember?"

Con draws a deep, shuddering breath and repeats himself in stilted English. "He's screaming. Like someone's… torturing him. You didn't say—"

"I told you not to let it get much past the end of him speaking." Grant clutches the device close to his chest. "You listened through over two minutes of silence to get to this part."

"Con…" Jona reaches over to touch his arm, but Con flinches away. "Was she able to help us?"

Con raises his right hand and presses hard at the bridge of his nose for a long moment. He exhales a slow breath, adjusts his glasses, and straightens as though presenting a speech in front of a class. "I am an agnostic. I am a scientist. I don't believe in… ghosts and reincarnation and all such associated claims. I don't disbelieve, I suppose, since it's quite difficult to disprove such things, but… so could someone please explain to me why I am fairly certain that there is a dead Frenchman speaking to me inside my head right now?"

Silence descends on the small group.

"Anyone?" Con looks from Jona to Grant. "And if you could reassure me that you're quite certain you don't have dead Frenchmen that you've been dreaming about, and that Eric doesn't, I would also find that reassuring.

"Because when the most logical explanation I am coming up with for what's happening involves ghosts, reincarnation, and possibly monsters made out of shadow… I think this may call for a drink and a very long meeting."