Went back through and did some basic formatting after realized failed to upload the document as I had it. nn;We should've realized. Sorry. Please enjoy.
Loko: Will be ten chapters in total, wethinks … and yes. Non-slashy Les Mis fanfic. Okay … still slashy. But not slash-focused. For the most part. Uh … will throw down shovel and stop digging ourselves into a deeper hole now. Yes. Sounds like a plan.
Fic Summary: Series of shorts; slashy on occasion; death and barricades and clouds and so very much lost youth. Will be updated irregularly; something of a pet project.
Chapter Summary: Enjolras. He'd always been a late-bloomer. The story behind a man, a cause, and a smile.
Disclaimer: We claim Enjolras:huge shot of Monsieur Hugo's glaring face: Er … never mind. You can keep him. :meep in corner:
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Dies Irae
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"It was not combat, it was the interior of a furnace; there mouths breathed flame; there faces were wonderful. There the human form seemed impossible …"
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables: pg. 1044, Modern Library Edition.
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Asclepias curassavica
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Dies irae, dies illa
solvet saeclum in favilla,
teste David cum Sybilla.
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Enjolras had always been a late-bloomer.
The Enjolras family was ecstatic with the birth of their first and only child. When they realized it was a boy, celebrations fell into a positively frenzied state: not only a carrier of the bloodline, but an heir to the estate! God was kind.
It helped that the child was beautiful. His eyes were blue as the fleur-de-lis, his skin, after the initial post-birth flush, lightened fresh and pale as blush-pink roses, and the fuzz on his head promised golden summery locks.
The only problem was that he did not smile.
When the midwife spanked him, to clear his throat and start his breathing, he gave one tremendous cry, almost as if he had been offended, and forthwith made no sound. His nurse had to remember to feed him – he did not cry for his milk.
His expression was forever serious, gazing out of innocence-blue eyes at the world as if contemplating the unworthiness of such a dismal place for his radiant beauty.
He lay in his carriage, sitting shaded on the fabulous green lawns of the Enjolras estate, and stared with his not-quite-frown at visiting ladies, cooing over his spun-gold hair and tender skin, looked balefully at their children – tended almost as carefully as the lawn – and generally unnerved and frightened visitors. It annoyed his mother, who enjoyed visitors, and amused his father, who generally did not.
He did not walk until his was almost two years old – exceptionally old – and yet, once he had begun, he mastered it rapidly and could soon run, walk, stroll, and make elegant legs to passerby and young ladies visiting at the parlour.
More worrying was his slowness to speech.
When he was almost four, his mother became concerned.
"Monsieur Enjolras must send for a doctor," she declared. "His son does not speak. Why does he not speak? All the other children of four speak and prattle merrily, playing their little court-games through the flowerbeds; but Monsieur Enjolras' son only watches the proceedings with a mildly interested air."
Monsieur Enjolras, used to allowing his wife this sort of thing, indulgently called in the best doctor for children known at the time.
As if to spite this considerable expense, the young Enjolras learned to speak the very day the doctor came.
"Madame's child does not have any problems," the doctor reassured Madame Enjolras, after having the boy name the estate, the trees, the garden, the pond, the carriage, and the boundaries of the land, all flawlessly. "He is quite intelligent, really – far advanced for his age."
Enjolras' mother looked at him in wonder, and decided to let it be.
Still, Enjolras was slow to mature. He grew up in a state of grave innocence, confused over the love-games his fellows played, the way the boys ran from the girls and vice versa. While the other children snuck glances at forbidden books and giggled and blushed over who had seen whose petticoats on which day, Enjolras was content to sit by his nurse and her women as they chattered and sewed, and simply watch the wind in the trees.
His hands were slender and dexterous, and could fix anything. The other children soon learned to come to him when their new toys were broken and they knew they would be punished for breaking them – and Enjolras said, with the confidence of a child, "I will fix it," and did.
Yet he knew nothing of kisses and the cause behind the sudden pink streaks across girls' noses when he glanced at them particularly attentively; he paid little attention to the simpering way some, already looking to advance their stations in life, would address him and try to follow him.
One day, when he was fourteen, a girl some years older than he – well developed, bosom soft and blushing under the much-too-low neck of her dress – caught him under a tree near the sunroom and tried to kiss him.
He pushed her unceremoniously away, hands against cushion of breasts, face flaring over in realization, and ran to his nurse.
His nurse looked at him, shook her head, and sent him to his mother.
His mother sighed and blinked slowly, and he could see that she had delicate blue veins over her eyelids, something tender and inexplicably frail.
"My dear child," she said, looking at Enjolras, and he was her dear child, although she had not taken care of him as a child, and really was herself barely older than a child when she had given birth to him. She was his father's second wife – the first having died in a childbirth that left her drained and shivering, and the child blue and cold – and although he was not a cold man, he did not know what to do with children. She was pretty and that was all.
"Mother," he said, and explained, the strange tingling of knowledge rising through his head like mist over the pond.
She caught him by the chin and kissed his forehead.
"My dear, strange, slow, brilliant boy," she sighed. "Don't take it too seriously, dear. It will come when it will, and pass when it will, and when it is over some girl will be extremely lucky, and extremely sad."
He ran from her and hid in a tree for hours, looking in anguish at his hands that had encountered that strange mystical softness, touching his forehead where his mother had kissed him, his ear where the girl's lips had gone after he'd turned.
He decided then that he could not stand women.
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When he'd been accepted to the Université de Paris, his father called him to his chambers. This rarely happened – only when he needed exceptional discipline or exceptional praise.
"My son," his father began, and Enjolras knew he was going to be praised, and he knew exactly what would come. "You are now a man."
And Enjolras had faltered, because he had known exactly what would come, and it had not.
"You are a man, now," his father had continued. "And you will soon come to inherit all of this land, and all else that is mine. Now, you go to complete your education, for a nobleman is always educated."
"Yes, Father," Enjolras said, uncertain of his role. His father had dismissed him, and he had turned to leave, but remembered something and was hesitant.
"Yes?" His father had asked, because one had to be perceptive to stay alive in the court.
"Is anything of my inheritance – Mother's?" Enjolras asked. His father looked sharply at him.
"What have you heard?"
Enjolras paused, reluctant to speak, but plunged on, because he was young and courage sang in his veins with his youth.
"That – she is not of noble blood. That she is – common blood. That she is only your wife because she is beautiful. That there is common blood in the Enjolras family tree."
His father closed his eyes, and Enjolras saw the tired blue veins at the corner shiver.
"There is common blood in the Enjolras family line, but it is not hers. She has more noble blood than any of the impostors you must have heard condemning her."
"Then - ?" Enjolras had frozen, because his father was a god and his mother was – less so, and easier to dirty.
"It is mine," his father had said softly. "There is on my side a common woman – a beautiful woman – from whence you have your fair hair and blue eyes. My mother was a poor woman, but the records have it hidden – and yet the gossip can fly. You, as my son, as the heir to the Enjolras bloodline, contaminated as it is, deserve the truth – and here it is. What do you make of it?"
Enjolras was silent, contemplating this. His mind, careful and sure and brilliant, slowly sifted through the information. And he spoke: "Father, why is it that common blood is such a terrible thing?"
His father looked startled. "Because they are – commoners," he fumbled, something Enjolras had never seen the man do. And suddenly the boy felt older – and his mother would have recognized it as one of his growths, his learnings, the way he knew nothing and then everything in one split second. "It is difficult to explain."
"Is common blood any different from our blood?"
"Not physically, I suppose," His father said softly.
"I will fix it," Enjolras said, the same way he fixed toys, broken wheels and carriages and doll parts strewn across his lap, blue eyes focused seriously at the little tools and pieces in his hands. "And when it is over, common blood will be nothing to be ashamed of."
His father looked at him, eyes the pale, faded grey that indicated blue in younger days.
"My son," he said, standing. "You – will be a god, when you are grown."
Enjolras said nothing, stunned into silence.
"That," his father continued, eyes closing and thin blue veins tracing the edge of his eyelids, and he was so old, Enjolras thought, so old, "Or you will die."
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At the Université, the first two days found Enjolras thoroughly and terribly lost, and the third found him directing other students to their classes with the surety of a senior.
In such a manner, he met Joly, an affable medical student wandering absently in the law wing, utterly confused and convinced the dust was going to give them all some horrible disease. Joly, who was laughing and bright and cheerful, soon introduced him to several new friends.
Among them was another medical student – the only other in the group – and thus, Enjolras met Combeferre, on the sixth day of his stay at the Sorbonne.
As things turned out, Enjolras loved learning almost as much as Combeferre did. Between them, they spent hours in the library, poring over ancient dusty volumes or crackling new publications, and then hours more strolling through Paris or sitting under the awning of a café, discussing their respective readings.
Combeferre was mature, serious, with a precisely calm demeanour through which occasionally slid glimpses of a blinding passion. He tied his hair back in a loose queue, and through his thick bangs his green eyes shone, intelligent and bright. Walking together through Paris, women flocked to try their wiles, and just as quickly left with only a disheartening memory of cold, blank blue and apologetic smile.
One such day, as they had been discussing something unimportant (the latest theory on the formation of gold, which Combeferre told him – in his confident scientific manner – was absolutely ridiculous) they witnessed an omnibus run over a child.
The driver, obviously in a hurry, flicked his whip at the trembling boy, and drove his horses relentlessly forward. The lead horse, plunging forward against the whip, knocked over the fragile child, clattered indelicately over the body, and drew his team behind him. Once, twice, thrice, heavy hooves drove screams into the air, and finally – Enjolras could not watch and could not turn away – the left wheel of the vehicle crushed the boy's chest entirely.
Then, silence.
As his father would have said, the boy was of common blood, dressed in dirty brown rags and shivering thin, bare ankles in the crispness of early winter.
This common blood spilled out fresh into the street, as crimson as Enjolras' own – Enjolras who had had three positively life-endangering encounters with cutting fresh tips into his pen and now did it for Joly, whose hands were unsteady whenever he was sick, Bossuet, who had a relationship with a knife the same way an infidel had a relationship with a crusader's blade, and the poet Jean Prouvaire, who just forgot.
Speaking of blood and forgetting – Enjolras turned to Combeferre.
"Is there any difference between common blood and noble blood?" He asked, the same grave intensity with which he drilled his teachers at the university soothing the scream-wracked air.
"No," Combeferre responded promptly, as if he too had given this considerable thought. "None, whatsoever. So-called 'common' blood is made of the exact same materials as 'noble' blood. They have the same properties; the same chemical makeup. They are identical but for the fact that one type flows in veins that can afford to have them bled for their health, and the other flows in veins that can barely send enough heat to a child's extremities. Every fibre of a man is the same as that of another's – and money is all that makes the difference!"
"I see," Enjolras said, somewhat taken aback by the vehemence in Combeferre's speech – the abrupt fury that lit up the green eyes and made them emerald. Combeferre laughed suddenly, a rueful puff of air visible in the cold.
"Apologies, Enjolras," he said, almost bitter. "Surely you are not so incensed over this as I. We at the medical school acquire cadavers, you know – I have spoken of these before – and there are children, little children of no more than five, no more than my sister's youngest, who come in with such things in their stomachs as you wouldn't believe. And then to leave that building with its smell of disinfectant to come out into the blinking sun, watching infants clad in Vincennes lace with their retinue of servants and nurses, their fragile lady mothers shaded from the sun - !"
Enjolras thought, carefully and slowly, and Combeferre, a new acquaintance of less than two months, recognized already the signs of a growth.
"I will fix it," he said, looking steadily at the blood against the cobblestone and then Combeferre's now-green eyes.
Those green eyes understood, Combeferre always understood, brilliant and sharp mind always understanding, and then he closed them. Enjolras suddenly saw, with perfect clarity, that the barely-visible veins at the corners of those eyes would in fifty years time come to stand out, signs of long hours spent over books and deep thought.
They were in a public place, but people were looking at what was left of child spattered over the road and the efforts of the gendarmes to enlist an aide to clean it. Combeferre leaned forward (he had been taller than Enjolras, then) and kissed Enjolras' forehead, and Enjolras' memories of his mother and his father suddenly blurred.
"Why?" He asked, because he knew nothing of friendship, either.
"Perhaps, I have kissed a god," Combeferre said softly, and snow began to fall onto fresh hot crimson. "And," he continued, "Perhaps I have kissed my friend."
Enjolras was silent, trying and failing to separate two remembrances in his mind (his father's closed eyes and his mother leaning forward and those blue veins, what did they do, anyway?)
"Either way," Combeferre was saying, "I have touched divinity."
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Enjolras, in Paris, after leaving home, learned to smile.
It wasn't a growth, or a learning, and he was clumsy and uncertain with it, and always it was slow.
Like a painting, it grew out of paleness: a stroke of shadow for dimples (something no one expected him to have and yet they were there, unused), slowly deepening and drawing into unfamiliar lines. The pale rose of mouth flushing with new blood, lengthening with careful brushes, curving up like a slow, languorous artist's arm painting a woman's sensuous figure. And a glimpse of teeth, white and shining, daubed in between crimson.
Slow – someone had timed him (maybe Courfeyrac out of fun; maybe Bahorel out of boredom) and it took a full minute to complete.
"You will never win women that way, my friend," Courfeyrac had warned him, and Enjolras had thought that was fine with him. Courfeyrac was laughing and picking up his drink. "They will be gone, eyeing some other pretty face before it even begins to finish."
"Perhaps some students actually study, as their titles suggest." Feuilly had been unable to prevent the tug of amusement on the corner of his lip.
"But when it is finished, it is beautiful," Jean Prouvaire, dark blue eyes kind and reassuring.
And it was: it was as if the sun had betaken herself to dress in her most radiant clothes and disguise herself as a boy – a smile like dawn rising upon the world.
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"It's Asclepias curassavica," Combeferre told Jehan late May, when it was so close to finals that even Combeferre could no longer bring himself to study. (Instead, he was reading some book about ancient herbal healings – "light" reading.)
Jehan looked at the slightly spiky leaves of the plant with a smile.
"When does it bloom?" He inquired.
"Late June, early August," Combeferre replied. "Little scarlet flowers with gold centres."
"Ah," said Jehan, looking delighted, and set it on the windowsill of the Musain back room. "Let's leave it to flower here, for when we have had our victory."
"Certainly," Combeferre said.
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"It's bloodflower," a rough, unused, alcohol-driven voice told Enjolras late evening, when everyone else had gone and he was studying maps as if his final exams were on the geography of Paris.
Enjolras looked up, slightly startled, and Grantaire was standing in front of him, no longer at his own table. That table: Enjolras associated it with lost mistresses, writer's block, anger, depression, and occasionally liveliness. It was where Feuilly went on occasion, when he came in smelling not of paint but of paving stones, and they knew that the situation was too turbulent for the upper-class to buy dainties.
"What do you want, winecask?" He'd always wondered why he was so cruel to Grantaire – perhaps because he could not afford to be cruel to anyone else. In some ways, cruelty kept him human, and, though he hated the thought, as a result Grantaire kept him human.
"Combeferre will tell you everything," Grantaire sneered.
"He's learned," Enjolras snapped.
"Did you know it's called bloodflower, Enjolras?" He asked, suddenly serious. "Poet Jehan thinks we will see it after the insurrection. Blooms late June."
"What is your point?"
"He's never going to see his bloodflower," Grantaire said. Get out, Enjolras thought, leave me alone, and maybe he said it out loud, because Grantaire said, "Let me stay. Will you permit it?"
"Leave," Enjolras snarled, and Grantaire picked up his coat and left.
Enjolras stared after him, then the innocent plant, and put his head in his hands.
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"Will you permit it?"
Enjolras caught a whiff of absinthe, and wondered if this man standing beside him was going to die because he was too drunk to realize he was going to die. There was a clicking of arms, and then he looked into this pair of dark brown eyes and knew, in that moment, everything there was to know about Grantaire.
He nodded.
Smiled.
Memories blurred the way they always did at the most inopportune moment: Bahorel looking at his pocket-watch (oh it was Bahorel) Courfeyrac laughing, a full minute, Enjolras (how much time do we have before they finish loading?) his mother closing her eyes his father leaning forward (no that's not right) Grantaire, standing there in the candlelight hissing angry words (tell you everything) Jehan dying Combeferre dying hopes and dreams dying (he'll never see his) Grantaire had days-old stubble this close (bloodflower) –
And Grantaire didn't close his eyes.
Enjolras didn't finish his smile.
(Bang)
Grantaire may have been the only person to ever realize that Enjolras smiled with his eyes first, and only then his mouth.
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Quantus tremor est futurus,
quando judex est venturus,
cuncta stricte discussurus.
-fin-
words: 3397
paragraphs: 135
sentences: 194
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Reviews are the anti-drug.
So, please: REVIEW! And keep our poor little selves off the street.
lokogato enterprises inc.
6:26 AM
06-05-05