"...fuck."
"Language, Courfeyrac," Combeferre said, though the reprimand was only half-hearted. Combeferre was sitting at a paper and book strewn table, resting his chin in his hands. Courfeyrac, across from him, and flopped face-first onto a book, and would have appeared dead did he not occasionally swear. Jean Prouvaire, sitting between them, was hiding his face in his hands and weeping.
"I can't take this anymore," Combeferre said at last, pulling off his spectacles and rubbing his eyes. "I hate to sound the pessimist, but we can't do this. There is no way."
"We'll be kicked out of school!" Jehan sobbed. Courfeyrac threw a book at his head. It missed, but the little poet cried louder anyway.
"I'll never graduate," Courfeyrac said. "I don't want to be a lawyer, but I don't want to be a student forever, either."
"…I've never failed a final before," Combeferre said weakly. Slowly, all three heads hit the table, each with a thunk. Jehan burst into fresh tears and Courfeyrac let out a low moan.
"I hate school," Courfeyrac said, his voice slightly muffled by the fact that he was face-down on the table.
"It's not school," Combeferre argued. "It's this professor."
"If Combeferre doesn't understand it, it's impossible," Courfeyrac said with finality. "We should just skip."
"We can't skip!" Jehan squeaked. "We'd just fail anyway, with a zero! At least if we try we might scrape… an F…"
"I've never had an F," Combeferre said, suggesting by his tone that the notion was somewhere up there between being scalped alive and castrated with a rusty knife. Which was on fire.
"I'll be stuck in an endless litany of assignments and lectures and student dues forever. How in hell do you tell your whore she has to leave before ten so you can go to class, and please don't mind me, I'm just finishing up an essay, you keep on undressing!" Courfeyrac cried.
"There must be another solution," Combeferre said. "There must be."
At that moment, Bossuet burst in. Granted, it was less bursting and more opening the door, tripping over the air, and tumbling in while nearly upsetting the table and all the papers on it. Combeferre sat up abruptly and put on his spectacles and Jehan wiped his eyes, leaving streaks of ink from his fingers across his face.
"What sends you in in such a rush?" Courfeyrac asked, not lifting his head from the table. Bossuet took a moment to catch his breath, then explained.
"General Lamarque's funeral! We're to stage an insurrection-- a barricade, across the whole street! A brilliant plan, for which I must claim a bit of credit."
"What?" Combeferre asked, startled. "They shall bring the police out on us."
"Worry not, my good philosopher!" Bossuet said, putting a large hand to his heart. "Do you really suppose our fearless leader would lead us to danger?"
The Eagle bounded out before any more questions could be asked and Combeferre slumped down in his seat, his mood doubly spoiled. Jehan looked worried.
"Damn it all," Combeferre said. "They will bring out the police, the government cannot afford even the smallest whisper of dissent. Police and guardsmen mean guns, which mean casualties, beyond a doubt."
"Deaths, likely," Jehan added miserably. Courfeyrac sat up like a shot.
"It's brilliant!" he cried, flinging his pen into the air.
"What is?" Jehan asked.
"This!" Courfeyrac cried, flailing. "It's the perfect way! Jehan won't be disgraced, Combeferre won't get an F, and I won't be stuck as a student forever! We'll go to the barricades!"
"But, at the barricades there will be--" Combeferre cut himself off, realization slowly dawning. "That is the most damnably idiotic…" he trailed off.
"It's quite poetic," Jehan said thoughtfully.
"Surely better to quite while you're ahead," Combeferre added. "The death of the young, even in such an uncivilized revolution as this is sure to be, has a greater impact than a man grown old who dies quietly."
"Think how great a night it'll be if I tell her I'm going to die the next day!" Courfeyrac whooped, punching the air with his fist. There was a pause. "…and I won't have to become a lawyer."
"I won't have to take my math final!"
"I won't have to besmirch my academic record!"
"Now," Courfeyrac said. "You cannot deny that I am brilliant."
"Yes, I can," Combeferre said. "But I will admit that the idea was rather clever."
"You know what this means we should do," Jehan said, sifting through the piles of notes, essays, and books. The other two students looked at him, and the small poet smiled angelically.
Combeferre supplied the matches.