A/N - oopsie, I posted the wrong chapter. Sorry if you thought you were seeing things.

After Peep finished her day's of school and Grantaire had rested awhile...and had another brandy, he was itching to get out of the house for awhile. He had Enjolras' carriage take him to the house he had grown up in. He stood at the gate, holding Peep's hand but unable to talk to her much. "You and me live here." he said pointing. He had sent word to the staff that he was going to be coming home in the next few days and a few staff members had been living there to keep the house fresh since the original housemaster passed away. He didn't know what it was going to look like in there but he could get anything changed he wanted to, his father had left a lot of money.

"Monsieur Grantaire." the valet came out to meet him. "I worked for your father, I look forward to working for you." he said, hoping his job was secure. He remembered the quiet boy with the black curly hair and bright blue eyes. He remembered having to keep his thoughts to himself as his former employer beat, belittled and berated the boy day after day. He gave a silent jubilant 'whoop' when the boy packed his bags and moved out and he lived for a few years in silent boredom serving only the one lonely drunken man. Today, he noticed that the first thing his new employer did was pour brandy from the decanter. He knew the look of someone who needed it and got a 'hit' when he drank it and groaned inwardly. Great, the rest of his career is going to be fetching drinks and calling cleaning staff to freshen up any room the man of the house had been in. "And, petit mademoiselle?" he asked.

"Oh, sorry." Grantaire said. "Margurite..." he stammered, realising that Claude might recognise the name. "...but we call her Peep." he smiled and slowly spelled C-l-a-u-d-e for her.

"One of the Musain Enfants?" Claude asked.

"Yes!" Grantaire said. "How did you know?"

"Oh, you're famous." he said. "Your father talked about you all the time."

"He did?" Grantaire asked.

"Yes sir, ummm...and he told us, well, I won't say so but he did keep us up to date." Claude explained. He would spare him the smack-talking his father did. "Mademoiselle Peep." he nodded to her. "Will you be wanting a nanny? There are some very good ones recommended."

"Well, she would have to know how to communicate with her. She already has a teacher, I can see if this lady is interested in full time live-in work. They get along well." he said so Claude would hold off on the nanny yet. What he most wanted to see was the rooms so he could see what he needed to buy for when Margurite came home.

"Monsieur Grantaire?" a lady said as she came out of the kitchen.

"Gabrielle?" he turned around and saw the woman who cooked the family's meals for all of this life. Now close to sixty, she had a grandmotherly look and he knew her cooking was good!

"It's good to have you home, Monsieur." she said.

"Monsieur Grantaire was my father." he smiled. "Please..." and he looked around at the staff "...it's just Georges. And this..." he said and introduced them to the little girl.

"Will you be moving back in?" Gabrielle asked and Grantaire nodded, finishing up the glass of brandy he had as all the staff's eyes were upon him. He would have to prove that, yes, he drank but he was a different kind of drunk than his father. "And the business?" she asked.

"I'm nowhere near running that." Grantaire said. "I can trust the ones who are there by the sound of it for the next couple of years." he could see, though that this was going to be the most excellent opportunity for practical hours in the upcoming years for himself, Enjolras and Courfeyrac. They would have some of the best lawyers in Paris as their mentors.

He hadn't noticed Peep wandering away and exploring until she came back into the sitting room carrying something over to him. "It's a top." he said to her, improvising a sign and showed her how to wind it up and spin it. "No, it wasn't mine, it was..." he looked towards the door off to the side of the sitting room. Victoire stayed in that room during the day so that she was close but out of the way and Grantaire found himself being pulled towards it by the hand. "...let's go." he said and followed her to the room. Margurite went into the room and spun a pirouette in the middle of the room as she saw for the second time in a moment the beautiful furniture, matching curtains and bedding, shelves of dolls and various wooden games. Some of them had been Grantaire's but most were bought for Victoire and not used. "Ah!" Grantaire smiled and the little girl looked at him. "Oui, it's all yours." he said and motioned towards it all. As she dove in, unable to decide which toy to play with so she just pulled them all over the place, Grantaire went back into the sitting room...surprised to see that the staff had all remained where they were when he followed Peep out of the room. Dismissing staff - this was going to take some getting used to.

"Is there anything we can do for you, Monsieur?" Claude asked.

"Yeah..." Grantaire said. "...open the shades and let some light in, it's fucking cold in here. And please, it's not going to be as formal here as before. If I forget to tell you 'that is all' kind of thing, don't feel you have to stay." he explained. "I have been living away from all of this for a few years." he pointed out. Between dorms and then the cafe, he had been away for five years and even when he did live there, it was his father's house.

"Would you keep this room for her, Monsieur?" the maid asked.

"Oui...ummm..." he stammered. He had never met this maid. They had an older one when he moved out who either retired or died, he wasn't sure.

"Nicolette, monsieur." she said.

"Nicolette." Grantaire repeated. "You look familiar." he said.

"I attended a few meetings at the cafe." she said. "I'm afraid I'm one of those who ran like hell...pardon..." she said, excusing her language "...who fled when M. Enjolras invited us to."

Grantiare nodded, no hard feelings. "Thank you for the support you did give, every little bit helped."

"May I ask?" she asked about who lived and who died and he gave her the rundown. "Anyway, yes, keep that room for her and maybe another in one of the others by the master room, she can decide where she wants to sleep." he told them. There were more rooms than they could possibly use on the upper floor and the staff quarters were on the main floor. He looked up the stairway. He would have to go up there eventually, God he hated that staircase.

For all of his childhood, Georges remembered getting home from school and standing at the foot of the staircase while his dad stood...about half way up the staircase and did nothing but make him feel like shit. Whether it was just to shout insults in a drunken rage or to accuse him of some imaginary misdoing. He didn't know that his father was a coward and HAD to be half way up the staircase so that he felt more powerful. Now, from the bottom of the staircase, Grantaire looked to the fireplace, the poker and a sheet of marble beside it. He felt sick to his stomach and remembered being summoned there, as a child to kneel on the marble - often with rocks on it or to stand on the poker pulled from the fire. His father always made sure it was hot enough to burn but not profoundly. Grantaire saw the wallpaper that he had to stare at as he knelt or stood in punishment...for doing nothing. As a child he often had to stand long enough that he wet his pants, as a youth, it didn't matter anymore because chances were he was already drunk.

He climbed up a few stairs and looked down onto the little bedroom that Peep was playing in. That was where his father had pulled Victoire from the last time he had seen her. He could see the ghosts of it happening, then shook his head and saw that it was the shadows of Peep running back and forth across the room and back as she checked everything out, so happy making sounds as she played. What was it that Victoire could possibly have done that would ever make it okay to round her up and send her away? Then again, what was it that a seven year old boy could have done that would make it okay to kneel him on marble for hours at a time? He let himself turn and walk upstairs, looking in the various rooms.

Things had changed in a few years. He pulled a door open and for the first time, possibly in his life he thanked his father. He had a water closet installed. Well, it was the most basic, you bailed a bucket into the toilet to wash it down but thank GOD there'd be no going outside at night! Every trip Grantaire had to take in the dark improved the chances of him passing out half way back to bed. This was not even ten steps from his bedroom door. Not too far for Peep either. He stood outside the door to the master bedroom and took a deep breath. No, nothing ever happened in there but he always dreaded the moment every morning when the door would open. While his father was in there, he was safe. Nothing could happen. No shouting, no pain, it was as though he didn't have a father.

Just as he figured, the room was draped in coldness. It wasn't like he wanted it decked out like a nursery but even the bleak grey of the bedding at the cafe wasn't as bad as the greyness and coldness of the master bedroom in the house. He looked in the closet. The suits were all the same, no variety of colour or style, they all just stank of his father's sweat and tobacco. Grantaire went through the jewelry armoire, fine gold cuff links and tie pins. A few grand pocket watches, some chains and rings. He found the ring his father earned upon his graduation and slipped it on his finger. Some day. He had no use for that particular one, however, he would earn his own. This one, he would sell. He reached on the wall and rang a servant's bell.

"Empty this closet, please." he told him. "I don't really care what you do with the clothes but...have a tailor here and someone who specialises in children's clothing too." he said and the servant took his orders. "...please." he added at the end, something that the staff wouldn't have heard much under their last employer.

"Oui Monsieur." he said. "How many dining tonight? I would like to inform Gabrielle."

"Just two and Gabrielle can make whatever she wants, I know she can't go wrong." he said and continued to poke through the wardrobes. "Oh..yes, that will be all, thank you." he dismissed the staff. Now, it was time to go across the hallway and into the room he shared with his sister as a child and later occupied by him alone. The closets were empty, he had taken his stuff with him when he left but the furniture was still there. The bed that had been Victoire's wasn't definitively a girl's bed - not like the canopy one in the downstairs nursery. He had a bit of thinking to do. This room was not a happy one. While his room was the one place that nobody harmed him or berated him, it was also the one place that nobody acknowledged him. Hearing tales of his friends as children who had been tucked in, read to, maybe have a lamp burning beside them until they fell asleep and seeing how bedtime went at the cafe and at Enjolras' house brought him into awareness. He stepped across the room and drew the curtains aside.

How come he didn't know about the view out that window? It was beautiful. For the first of it, he wouldn't have been able to reach it but as a youth and young adult he could have, yet he didn't. Had he never looked out his bedroom window down to the street scene below? There was a beautiful park just blocks from their house, did he know that? Or had the world been just various shades of back and white and grey? There was green a way back in his memory but that ended when he was very young. He hadn't realised how miserable he had been. It all seemed so normal back then.

He shook his head quickly, it wasn't worth mourning the past. What broke his gaze out the window? The squeals of delight from downstairs, coming closer now until he felt something plow full force into his lower back and arms wrap around...or almost around his waist.

'This is yours, too." He turned and told her, waving around the room. "Yes, that, too." He nodded about the downstairs room. "Mine is here." He took her across the way.

"Those aren't your clothes." She said, looking at the closet.

"No, they were my Papa's." He regretted getting rid of the expensive suits, they would fit, too but they stunk of him. He would only keep the gold. They explored the rest of the upstairs together. The office kind of upset him, he used to have to sit in there and "don't touch anything" if his father was 'entertaining' upstairs. He was, however allowed to have wine in there so that's all he did, sat in there and drank wine. On the desk was a press for pamphlets. Shit...they could have used that had he known.

"Papa?" Peep asked. "Can we get a dog?"

"We'll see." He said as the dinner bell rang. "Nothing formal unless we have formal company." He told the staff. He knew the house staff wouldn't relax too much the elaborate place settings, endless cutlery and staff standing by wasn't what he was used to, now. They would be amazed, maybe appalled to hear about them all crowded around the table that would become Jean Prouvare's bed in a few hours, grabbing for things while the boys belched and farted and the students smacked heads and sent them away from the table.

"Can we have friends over?" She asked,

"Ohyes!" He said. "This..." he promised her "...will be the best house you or I have ever lived in."