A/N: That was a bunch of reads and comments, since I last posted! Thanks so much to everyone who read and reviewed, and all that jazz...

This time, it took a bit longer to upload the next chapter. Reason for that is, that the wonderful Valiya agreed to smooth over my more blatant deficiencies of the english language and betaed what I wrote. thanks a million times for this, Valiya, it's very, very helpful :-)

I hope, that this will make the writing slightly better, and easier to read (less comma issues and the like...).

So, here we go. This chapter will see Eponine and Enjolras again, out of prison, but still not quite clear what they should make of the situation. And there will be Marc Lamarin, finally, who will have to decide on what he is going to do...

Enjoy, and I really, really appreciate comments :-). Tell me what you think.

A/N: Some corrections courtesy of the great judybear236

Chapter 14: Of making friends and influencing people

"There comes a time when you look into the mirror and realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. Then you accept it, or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking into mirrors."

"So, Mademoiselle, what do you make of this?"

He handed her one of the tartelettes he had purchased from a stand on the street and Éponine mumbled a thanks, both bewildered and suspicious at the gesture and situation overall. If she was to be honest with herself, she did not know why she was still here, but it did not even feel as if she had been given a choice in the matter. She certainly had not been consulted. He had just assumed that they would be making their way back to Saint Michel together and had set off from the prison as if there was no question at all.

A bourgeois after all; thinking that the whole world was at his disposal.

There was a certain uplifting quality to the fact that Enjolras had exhibited small, if hardly remarkable relief at leaving the walls of the prison behind him. He had taken a deep breath as the gates had closed behind them, and his shoulders had relaxed, only in a minuscule manner, but still noticed by his companion. Éponine was used to taking her triumphs bit by bit.

But he had proposed breakfast, and that was not an offer to be discarded lightly.

The apple tartelette was still even a little warm.

Nevertheless, as she took her first bite, leaning next to Enjolras to the wall of one of the houses framing the square they had just stepped upon, she took a moment's time to reflect what had happened. Her shoulder was still throbbing in pain, but she had been spared the fever for now; whatever Combeferre had done seemed to have worked, at least. It was one less thing to worry about.

Otherwise, the events were quickly spinning out of control. She had no idea what to do about her father in jail and did not even want to think about what he and the Patron-Minette would think about her showing up there with Enjolras. But all the same, the deed had been done and she had been left to clear up the mess.

However, she would do it in the end.

The exasperating man next to her did not make things easier. Enjolras had a natural ability – and inclination – to command, and he took situations in his hand the way a craftsman took his tools, with experience, skill and an implicitness that was a whirlwind to behold and about as easy to resist.

Éponine was used to being made a tool of.

Her father had long since made it clear that her participation in his shadier deeds and action was mandatory. If she would not share the fate of her younger brother (not that after what she had seen, it was necessarily the worst thing of all) she had simply complied because she had nothing better to do, and it was the only thing that she seemed capable of.

Montparnasse had the experience of long years of companionship on his side. They had been closer in earlier times, until he had entangled himself so deeply into the more sinister corners of the slum streets that were home to both of them. Still, the long standing history between them was not to be dispelled so easily.

Marius had a more subtle way of using her. His weapons were smiles and kind words, bestowed upon her in an off-handed manner that was both attributed to his gentle nature and a lack of care for her personally.

Enjolras' easy presumptions were a completely different matter, however. Especially when he asked thoroughly unexpected questions.

Like that after her opinion.

"Next time you do something like this," she advised, dodging his question out of principle, "you should do something about that head of yours."

She nodded towards his blonde curls and was met with a raised brow.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You stick out," Eponine informed him. "Like a sore thumb, that is. You have at least four guards in La Force now who are wondering if you're the guy who keeps giving those speeches about the city. And they are only the ones I noticed. I'm not even talking about the inspector. Sometime someone might consider keeping you inside for a change."

He pondered that for a moment, the tartelette forgotten in his hand.

"I see," he nodded, thoughtful. "I had not considered that."

Éponine was momentarily speechless. Of all the reactions that she would have expected to her taunting, easy admittance had not even been on the list.

"Even though," he continued as an afterthought, "deception is not something that I pride myself in."

That she believed. It seemed out of the question that the man, who would bravely face crowds, policemen or Inspectors head-on, would resort to the shadows. A boy of summer, indeed.

He took a small bite of his tartelette and chewed carefully, watching the busy dealings of the square. She knew what the steely blue eyes were looking for.

He was not stupid. But he was, as Éponine realized with some measure of astonishment, fully unafraid. His wandering gaze was more of a challenge than anything else.

Éponine, who was currently not in a hurry, left him to his musings and focused on breakfast.

"What do you see?" Enjolras asked suddenly after a moment of silence, his eyes still scanning the crowd. He made no inclination that he was even aware of her presence, his gaze fixed on the scenery before him with alarming intensity, as this seemed to be his way.

There was something magnetic in his stillness. He was a boy, with summer in his hair, and Éponine was not sure at all what he had been aiming at.

Nevertheless, he had bought her food. She could indulge him a little.

For a moment, they watched the people pass. It was a peculiar crowd that had assembled there between Saint Germain and Saint Michel. The poor mixed with the bourgeois and the young, hopeful folk that were the students of La Sorbonne passed next to one another, swirled in patterns and shapes.

And never mingled.

She wished that she had had that revelation before she had fallen for Marius. The barrier between the well-off and the desolate only opened in one direction, and she had long passed that frontier, never to return. Irrevocably, she was part of the beggars of the street, however much she might dream otherwise. The likes of Marius, for all she might try, were as unreachable to her as the sky.

"Oil and water", she finally commented. "Doesn't mix."

Enjolras frowned slightly, all the while without removing his gaze from the crowd. But he did not answer right away, and Éponine decided to return the question to him. Perhaps this would help her understand finally what he was up to.

"And you?"

He turned to her, taking his eyes off the crowd as if he had decided his answer on that question long before she had even uttered it.

"The future," he responded with severity, and now it was to Éponine, who responded with a frown. He stepped a bit closer to her and pointed towards some of the sceneries before her; snippets in the great picture, like a window opening into a formerly forbidding façade. He indicated a young man in the clothes of a worker, sitting on the steps of a house entrance reading a pamphlet, his face screwed in concentration at what was probably an unfamiliar activity. "There," he said, and then shifted his gaze to a grisette who was walking on the arm of a student, laughing at something he said, the light in her eyes reflected in his.

Éponine, seeing herself and Marius, felt an almost bodily substantial pain.

"There," Enjolras pointed out, turning to an older man in simple clothes and who propped himself on a cane. In spite of this, his gestures were all fierceness and fury as he yelled at a young bourgeois who had apparently carelessly shoved against him in passing. "Or there."

He lowered his arm and surveyed the scenery for a moment.

"A first glance of liberty," he said, and for a moment, Éponine thought that she had heard something elusive in his voice that reminded her of the way he spoke in front of a crowd. Carefully, she looked at him without turning her head, and saw something quickly ghosting over his features that might have been satisfaction. Or hope. "Things are changing, Mademoiselle," he continued. "Those that have lived in fear will start to see the possibilities." He blinked, a little more slowly than usual. "Soon…"

He turned his head to look at her, blue eyes clear as the summer sky above them, and she was for a moment at loss for what to say. Marius, when speaking about their goals, hopes and dreams, had a warm quality about him, like a sunbeam breaking through the clouds. Enjolras however, burned with a fire that came from within. While Marius hoped and dreamed, he believed.

It was a frightening thing to behold, rare, precious and scary.

A thing of which she had not even been aware that it existed.

"You will never stop, will you Monsieur? Whatever they do, however they try to frighten you."

The revelation was so sudden that she spoke it out aloud, and he shook his head.

"No. Not until we all are free."

It could have sounded fierce or angry, but there was only absolute security in his words, as if he had stated that the sun would come up in the morning. She shook her head in astonishment.

"Why?"

She had asked the same question to Marius long ago, and he had given her so many words, all of them beautiful. Of égalite, liberté and fraternité; the ideals of a generation long ago and the dream of a time before the revolution had started to kill its own children, only to bring them back to the beginning of the story. He had spoken of a king and nobles (with bourgeois now put into the bargain) and an army of those that fought for the crumbs of the table. He had talked of equality and opportunities, and of his own desire to be his own man, not the product of generations of Pontmercies before him; of the value of a person, instead of the value of a name.

Beautiful words. Beautiful and alluring.

But Enjolras, for all his eloquence, chose a much simpler approach.

"Because we are all human," he answered. "And this is the way it is meant to be."

There was an honesty to his words that was strangely revealing. He was capable of candor, of beautiful, courageous and angry words. But this, she realized, was the heart of it.

And Éponine had no answer for this.

Silently, they watched the hustle, as she almost unconsciously tried to see what he saw and failed.

"You have not answered my question," he continued after a while, having finished his breakfast. He took a handkerchief out of his pockets to clean his fingers and absentmindedly handed it over to Éponine, when he saw her wiping her fingers on the folds of her skirt. "Here."

Again he had surprised her, and she complied mechanically, old childhood reflexes remembering what her mind did not while she pondered an answer.

"It's trouble," she finally summarized. "And strange at that."

Enjolras took back the handkerchief she offered and pondered it for a moment.

"I thought so, too." He frowned softly. "There may of course be the possibility of…" there again was the wry note around his mouth, not quite a smile, not quite annoyance, "that head of mine raising suspicion, which might be why no one was inclined to tell me where the dwarf and the other prisoner have gone, but…"

"No," Eponine contradicted, without even letting him finish. There was no point. He was on the wrong track. "The watchman didn't have a clue what you were talking about."

Now it was a smile, at least the ghost of it.

"Ah yes. That remarkable perception of yours." He crossed his arms before his chest, turning towards her, but time and again his eyes darted back to the crowds. He had not forgotten the morning yesterday, this much was clear enough to him. "This leaves us with two possibilities, I would say. One – they have escaped on their own. Two – they have had help."

"That's provided they took off together," Éponine remarked. "I don't know about the dwarf, but 'Parnasse doesn't exactly warm to people quickly."

"So any combination of the two would be valid as well," Enjolras concluded, unfazed. "But would this…" he searched a word for a moment, "associate of yours leave his accomplices behind?"

Éponine shrugged. "Sure. Why not?"

That earned her a raised brow.

"Not much honor amongst the wolves, is there?"

Éponine snorted.

"It's always a good idea to look out for yourself," she informed him. "There's no telling if someone else will do it, if you do not. But you're not thinking far enough," she continued. "You've said it yourself. Escape is easier, if you have outside help. Therefore – if you see an opportunity, even if that opens to you alone, you run."

"Like you did yesterday," Enjolras concluded wryly.

She crossed her arms before her chest and chose not to answer. Instead, she found herself under scrutiny of the weapon that was his clear blue gaze, but her defences held firm. She was Éponine Thénardier. There was not much that she was afraid of.

Finally, he turned away again to watch his surroundings.

"So your associates don't know, the watchmen don't know, and most certainly we don't know." Enjolras shook his head. "Two men vanishing like fog in the morning sun."

She looked at him and could not fully mask her surprise and exasperation.

"You really think this is surprising, Monsieur?" She shook her head. "It happens all the time."

"I am well aware of that," Enjolras gave back, but not without bite. "I do not have to like it, though. And I confess I have not seen it so often in people that I have personal dealings with."

Éponine shrugged and thought of herself; having been Thénardier and vanished, and having turned Jondrette who was invisible and slipped between the cracks of the world.

Perhaps, she thought, she would need another name for doing what she did right now. Jondrette, she figured, did not fit into the world of bourgeois boys dreaming of revolution.

The interesting question was – did Éponine?

She brushed away the nagging thought in the manner one brushes away a fly.

"If Parnasse's out, he'll show up. He always does."

"So we would know then." He did not phrase it as a question, but it was one nonetheless, judging by the gaze he was giving her, and Éponine felt as if she were standing at another threshold without having realizing it approaching.

She was in a state of transition; in between things. The strange day yesterday had entangled her in the web that surrounded Marius' friends, and what had begun as a desperate reaction towards a threat on Marius' life had morphed into something akin to curiosity.

The dealings of Enjolras and his friends were not her own – Éponine had never even considered stepping into something as big as the plot to overthrow a state – but she had been in the vicinity for more than enough time than was probably deemed wise.

There was one thing in which Enjolras was right. Her quick reaction on the market the morning before had brought her closer to them by necessity. The probability that she was wanted by the same people was high. Montparnasse had confirmed it, and she had no reason to believe that he was lying. Therefore, she figured it would be in her own interest, of sorts, to find the bottom to all of this.

This was what decided the matter.

"I guess," she answered, not admitting too much, but it was good enough for him, and he nodded.

"Thank you Mademoiselle," he said surprisingly. And then, "I appreciate it."

Not that his appreciation meant much to her, but it was nice to hear it in spite of everything.

With a flash of pain she realized she that could not remember Marius ever saying something like this. Not to her, at least.

"No problem," she answered, giving her best shot at an unfazed outer appearance. He frowned, for just a moment before he nodded and pushed himself off the wall.

"So, Mademoiselle," he offered. "I figure, we should try and find out how the others have fared, don't you think?" His gaze was full of energy, as if all his stillness had been spent during the last moments of conversation. "Let's see how Courfeyrac, Marius and Gavroche have passed the night. And I am certain they will be most interested in the story we have to tell."

She had had every intention of dropping him off somewhere with his friends and taking off again on her own errands.

Trust him to ruin that plan of hers as well.

Marc Lamarin was still trying to find out why he had said what he said.

As if trouble had not been big enough yet, he had agreed to something that was well beyond what he had ever done, and certainly beyond what he thought himself capable of.

He had been overwhelmed much in the same way as he had been when Jacques and Joseph had talked to him a few months ago, speaking of what it was that they were doing here in the Capital, and in unison with brothers back home in Provence. It had been frightening. Exhilarating.

Irresistible.

Quite like the fierce appeal of the woman that was sitting on the couch, valiantly fighting back tears as she schooled her face into a mostly neutral expression.

And yet, there was a part of him that had already formed the questions he would have to ask her to find out how to bend the paragraphs and words to his will.

Only a few months into his studies, Marc Lamarin had already found out that he was a natural when it came to the interpretation of the finer workings of the legal system. Learning at his father's knee had helped, but intelligence, enthusiasm and diligence had completed the picture. He was not sure whether he could do what she had asked on his own. But he was strangely sure that he could do something.

However, there was no time to go deeper into this train of thoughts. Steps on the stairs heralded the arrival of some of the other members of the Amis de l'ABC as Jacques had used to call them, interrupting his musings.

A key was turned in the lock, and the door opened to reveal two young men. Lesgles – or Bossuet, as he had learned yesterday - he knew by sight, having met him in one of the few lectures the man had attended lately. As to the other, the young man with sandy hair and spectacles was Joly, a medical student. In fact, they had been part of the group that had found him the day before when he had rushed around the streets in a bout of panic, and he still gratefully remembered it.

As they arrived, they were deep in a discussion of their own.

"… and that is something I'll probably hear about for months on end," came the slightly plaintive voice of Joly as he opened the door.

"Joly, I've told you time and again," Bossuet responded. "Don't bait her. She loves that sort of thing, and it's only going to be to your ruin." He was slightly older, his hair receding already, which gave him a look of dignity that the other two lacked. His voice was amused and almost ridiculously light-hearted and fully in contrast to the mood that had reigned in the room before.

The relief was immediate.

"I did no such thing," Joly contradicted, taking a moment to breathe deeply. He seemed slightly out of breath and stopped for a moment, taking deep gasps and murmuring something about the possibility of pneumonia and the dangers of flats higher up the house. "I have just told her…"

Combeferre and Madame de Cambout shared a gaze that spoke of mild amusement before the former got up to greet his friends.

"Good morning," he said, a wry smile on his lips that seemed slightly forced, but not overly so. "I trust your night has been peaceful."

Bossuet took a moment to absorb the words that had been spoken, and then turned towards Combeferre.

"After a fashion," he confirmed and shook Combeferre's hands in greeting. "Not quite the excitement you seem to have had, at least." His eyes quickly darted to Madame de Cambout, who had risen from the couch as well, self-consciously crossing her arms over the soiled – but chaste – nightdress.

"Madame!" That was Joly, who had apparently caught up with the situation, and he focused immediately on the woman in their midst, with a genuine concern and worry that was at odds with his bickering just a moment before. "I have heard dreadful things."

"All of them true, I am afraid," she replied, sadness shining in her eyes, contained by an iron grip. And then, softer, "all of them true…"

Lamarin watched the young medical student fuss over Madame de Cambout without reservation or second thought, checking on her condition, making her move arms, legs and shoulders and breathe deeply to be certain that she was more or less unhurt. It seemed that the recognition of Combeferre, who had spent the night in the same apartment as her, was as much a medical student as Joly was, had been ignored. But she indulged him, and for at least a moment, it chased the dead look out of her eyes.

"Glad to see you unharmed," Lamarin felt himself spoken to as he watched the scene and turned to find Bossuet who, after having gained his attention, placed a quick hand on his shoulder. "And glad to see you're…" he gave a quick nod to the papers that were on the table, forgotten for the moment, but did not elaborate further. "You had us worried there, for a moment."

Lamarin pondered this for a moment. There had been moments – in fact, many moments after the jester in Issy had started throwing knives at them, hitting Jacques and Sylvain, and lord knew who else – where he had thought himself lost in a haze of fear.

But things had become better; with a good night's sleep, the illusion of safety among comrades, and the task at hand. He was still scared, but lucid, at least.

"I'm better," he therefore confirmed, with some certainty, and Bossuet pressed his shoulder, before taking his hand away. There was a comforting sort of camaraderie in his demeanor that faded well into the spirit of the room which held the air of a comfortable reunion. They all knew each other so well – so much better than the Cougourde, which consisted at times of these, at times of those people, depending on who was actually there. There was a steady shift of people travelling from Aix to Paris and the other way round, and no week was exactly the same as before.

This group - the Amis de L'ABC, felt more like a single, living, breathing being brought together in a synthesis of minds. And in the face of the adversity, they had only been brought closer, one looking out for the other with the ferocity of a brother or a loved one.

The Cougourde, he painfully remembered, had scattered everywhere when the attack had come.

"That's the spirit, boy," Lesgles nodded in appreciation and turned towards the rest of the group, while Hélène de Cambout, taking a basket from Joly that apparently held the promised fresh clothing, vanished into the small washing room.

"So," Combeferre began after a moment's silence. "What now?"

There was an exchange of ideas on their situation and of what was to be done. Enjolras, while being specific in the fact that he wanted to see every single one of them at the Musain at nightfall, had been much less detailed about what he expected to happen in the meantime. In principle, the day should be dedicated to the settling of dust – and to the investigation on what had happened, as Combeferre insisted.

Classes, however, were fully out of the question.

And there had been one command from Enjolras that could not to be ignored.

No one was to be left alone.

"Madame de Cambout will have to go to the authorities," Lamarin finally said. This was one of the things he actually had already figured out. "She needs to give her account of the night to them, so that no shadow of a doubt can fall upon her role in all this. Even though," he hesitated for a moment, "I am not so sure that it would be wise to reveal Mademoiselle Éponine's involvement in this…"

He was not sure what the gamine had done at the house of the Cambouts, and neither Combeferre nor Enjolras had raised the question. But given her appearance and the overall situation, Lamarin thought, he would probably rather not know.

"I will tell them that I ran. As simple as that."

She stood in the door, having changed into a simple dress of washed-out blue, that was a little tight around the waist and too long into the bargain, but not overly so. She looked less dishevelled now, and although still pale, she seemed to have regained some sort of footing, at least.

After a moment's thought, Lamarin found he could not find fault with that.

"I'll take you," Combeferre offered immediately. "And after that, to your parents' home maybe, I would wager."

She nodded, and it was decided that Bossuet and Joly, wherever they would roam for the morning, would come and get Combeferre from the Dufrancs' residence at midday.

Until then, Joly suggested, mindful of Lamarin's account of the Issy events the day before that they should try their luck at the Necker. It was closer to Issy than the Hôtel-Dieu, and chances were good that they would find more information on those members of the Cougourde that had been injured by the assault of the jester.

And thus they parted, leaving behind the empty apartment, and set off into the busy Parisian streets.

He was pale and silent, and looked nothing like himself.

In a spacious room with the sunlight only insufficiently shut out by closed curtains, Lamarin stared at the feverish figure of Jacques Morier and wondered how a man that seemed insurmountable and indestructible when standing, could look so small.

His chest was wrapped in bandages, and there was a thin sheen of sweat covering his face even though the room was actually fairly cool, despite the warm May sun. His eyes were glassy and it took a visible effort to focus his gaze on Lamarin. His breathing was labored and seemed to pain him.

The doctor had warned them. He is not well, he had said, but not wanting to deprive a potentially dying young man of the comfort of his friends, he had allowed the visit on the promise that it be brief.

"Marc," Jacques rasped, for the Cougourde had taken the habit of calling one another by their first names. It was as if giving a shell of familiarity opposed the warmth that interlinked the Amis de L'ABC, who as a rule used their family names as addresses between them.

The young man nodded in response and took a seat on a chair next to the bed, while Bossuet and Joly stood at a small distance. The former wore a frown on his face; the latter so clearly worried, it would have been almost ridiculous had Lamarin not known by now that the concern was actually genuine.

"Jacques…" he began, even though he had no idea how to proceed. The man lying in this bed had so little to do with the man of dark, vibrating charisma that he remembered and admired.

It was almost like returning to a place of childhood dreams, only to remember that the enchanted willow was nothing more than a gnarled, old tree and the wishing well was a dirty opening long since run dry.

"I am glad that you made it out of this alive," he said, despite this revelation, or even because of it, and Jacques coughed painfully.

"Some life," he answered, screwing his face in pain for a moment. "That wretched jester I fear may yet be successful."

"Don't say that," Lamarin intercepted right away, and this earned him a surprised look from Jacques, who apparently had not expected this. "That's certainly not going to happen."

Jacques snorted in an emotion that Lamarin could not place.

"What are you going to do to prevent it, hm?" He shook his head. "We're crippled. For the moment, the Cougourde are scattered like sheep without a shepherd." His gaze focused on Joly and Bossuet, who were standing close to one another at the foot of the bed. "I fear we're small help for you at the moment. Tell Enjolras, that he should probably not count on us for any time soon."

"I'll certainly do no such thing." Bossuet settled the matter right away. "I might tell him that you've received a bitter blow, but that is all that there is to it. We may yet sort this out."

"We were not the only ones to receive an attack." Lamarin had been dying to pass that information on to Jacques, but now, the man was hardly in a state to receive it well. Behind his feverish eyes, thoughts were going slow, and he had trouble to focus on his young friend.

"Meaning?"

Lamarin in few words relayed what he had heard during the last hours, the attacks; both successful and failed, and the events that came with them.

Midway through his speech, Jacques closed his eyes, and when Lamarin had ended, the older man's voice was slurred, pained, and only with difficulty he managed to get the words out.

"Ill news indeed, Marc." He took a moment to gather his breath. "Ill deeds, ill news. We…"

Jacques broke off mid-sentence.

Lamarin stared at him, and felt something akin to horror. Joining the Cougourde had been the scariest – and best – thing he had done in his life. Despite his fear of falling into events that were too big for him, and too monumental at that, he had still agreed with the goals, and had still agreed to take back the stolen revolution into the hands of those that brought them about. He had understood what Jacques had said then, that those who dared to take the fight for their rights to the streets merited their share of the bargain, and that royalty and selected bourgeois, too clever for their own good, had ridden the tide that was driven by others to come out on top.

The measure of a man, Jacques had said, should be his deeds and capabilities in battle and strife for justice and good. Not his capabilities of whispering the right things into the right ears.

This, to Lamarin who had grown up in a household with a mother sporting the most popular salon of Aix, had been the sheerest music.

But now, this dream was falling apart at the seams. He could feel the door that had barely opened to him shut again, and with finality this time.

He would, he could not allow it.

"I need to know where they all live."

That brought Jacques to open his eyes again.

"Marc?"

"I need to know where they live. I know that Sylvain and Armand are here as well, and I will speak to them, but if I want to find the others I need to know where they are. They'll not return to Issy after what happened."

He found himself with a raised brow.

Jacques Morier, when in full possession of his forces, was able to radiate friendliness and displeasure in almost equally frightening measures, depending on the situation and his own inclination.

At the moment, the expression was so warped by fever that Lamarin did not even recognize it.

But he remembered the cheer that had risen in the Café Musain as he had arrived with Bossuet and the others after their excursion to Rue Plumet, and the friendliness, warmth and relief at seeing everyone safe and sound.

Not knowing about the others from the Cougourde was unbearable.

"You?" Morier asked, slightly doubtful, but Lamarin nodded with conviction.

"I am here. So I do it."

And Jacques, true to his convictions to judge a man on his deeds and his strength, honored this statement and nodded.

"Very well," he said. "I'd take notes, if I were you."

"Seems we just found ourselves an agenda for the day," Bossuet commented as they left Jacques Morier to his feverish dreams a few minutes later. "Not the worst thing to do."

"Indeed," Joly commented, shielding his nose from the hospital air by means of a handkerchief. "I am surprised anyhow, that none of you has taken this upon him yet."

Lamarin nodded, maybe a bit sadly, skimming the list of addresses that he had trouble locating in his still patched-up understanding of the streets of Paris. It was indeed odd that none of the Cougourde had showed up here yet, but he guessed that they were hiding.

As he would have done, had he not run into Bossuet, Joly and the others.

"We are not like you, I fear." He finally summarized the revelation that his observations during the last hours had brought him to, and it was not without regret.

Joly, however, laughed at that.

"Be happy about that, my friend," he commented, clapping Bossuet's shoulder in a fond and slightly jesting gesture. "Another Courfeyrac or – lord beware – another Enjolras might just be a bit more than this city could take."

Lamarin was about to protest, to remark that there was indeed very much of Enjolras in Jacques, but he hesitated because indeed, there was a difference. It was difficult to place, but profound nonetheless.

"Forcibly yes," Bossuet agreed and shook his head. "And with all the misfortune in the city centered on me, I would be very surprised, if you would not find all your comrades safe and sound."

Joly made a dismissing sound, but Bossuet's cheerful attitude rendered this unnecessary anyhow. The older man placed his arms around both his friends' shoulders, a brotherly gesture of support and cheer.

"Come on, my friends. Let's find these stray sheep of Morier's. I make a good sheepdog, so never you worry."

"All bark and no bite," Joly commented to Lamarin exclusively, even though Bossuet heard of course, and gave a world-weary sigh.

"Such is the way of my life. Misconception and misfortune in abundance."

And thus they set out, towards the next rooms where the remaining injured of the Cougourde were to be found.

And Lamarin, even though the situation was still every bit as hopeless as before, could not help feeling slightly more optimistic about it.