A/N: After three whole chapters, I'm still waiting on my miraculous transformation into Victor Hugo. This is getting crazy, guys.
Enjoy!
Luca spent the rest of the morning showing Jehan all of her haunts—closet-sized salons where poets smoked and talked and argued, galleries with flying gothic ceilings, brothels that were really just gathering places for young women. The whole district was cheerful and relaxed. The people were admittedly very poor and emaciated more often than not, but everyone was smiling despite their hard luck.
As he followed her through the streets of her neighborhood, Jehan watched Luca and realized that somewhere, some man must have her as his muse. How could these artists resist this girl that was so…different? She wasn't for Jehan, since he wasn't enough of a proper artist to have a muse, but she was too iridescent to be ignored by such inspired people.
"It's been an hour, Mademoiselle Luca," he told her. "I apologize, but I really should get back to my own flat."
"You're not staying for supper?" the girl asked, whipping her head around and sending her hair flying around her head like beams of sunlight.
"I don't want to overstay my welcome, or eat any of your food," Jehan explained, before literally biting his tongue. He knew he'd just wounded her pride with his implications.
"We're perfectly capable of feeding an extra person every now and then," she snapped. "But I guess if you have to go, Alexandre will be glad for whatever bits of peace he can get."
"I'm sorry…" Jehan said.
"What's to be sorry about?" she demanded a little too brightly. "If you have to go, you have to go! In fact, you can leave now. Do you know your way home?"
"Actually, I wanted to talk to your brother, about something those men mentioned—."
Luca stopped in her tracks, and her eyes lit up with a new and ferocious anger that bordered on fury.
"You aren't talking about those meetings, are you?" she asked in a dangerously low voice.
"I—I was, b-but…"
She grabbed him by the collar of the shirt and brought his face down close to hers. "Don't you dare mention those boys to Alexandre; don't you dare encourage him. All of them are going to get themselves killed on some alter to their 'Patria.' None of those stupid bourgeois brats even understand Alexandre! They don't know what life is really like for us."
"You don't even know what they're fighting for!" Jehan exclaimed, stung by her comment about the bourgeois. He wrenched himself out of her grip.
"It doesn't matter what they're fighting for," Luca snapped. "They shouldn't be fighting at all; they're just school boys, most of them. That leader of theirs can't be more than eighteen."
Jehan stammered incoherently for a moment, until Luca grabbed his arm and pulled him along.
"Where do you live?" she asked. "I just remembered that you were probably too drunk last night to remember how you got here."
He told her his address, and then they walked in silence until they were well out of Montparnasse. Finally, she spoke up.
"I apologize for having a nervous breakdown on you, Prouvaire."
"That's fine. I shouldn't have mentioned it."
"No, no," she insisted. "There wasn't any way that you could have known, and, to be honest, I could be over-reacting. They're really only meetings right now. I'm sure Monsieur Enjolras, their leader, wants to stage an insurrection, but he has some pretty strong opposition, the way Alexandre tells it."
"Insurrection?" Jehan repeated. "Debray and Grantaire only told me that they wanted to help the poor."
"They want to overthrow the monarchy," Luca said. "They have support, too. But trust me, Prouvaire; everyone else would be too scared to aid them in an armed revolt."
"It's happened before," said Jehan, thinking of '93.
"And that turned out really well, didn't it?" Luca scoffed.
"So you're saying Grantaire lied to me?"
"No, not really. Overthrowing the monarchy really would help the poor, if they could manage it. However, I don't think they could."
"Have you given up hope, then?" Jehan asked. He found himself sympathizing with the rebels he'd never met.
"No," she said again. "I plant my hope in other, happier places."
"Like in your painting?"
"Exactly. Morrel sometimes tells me that if you want to trust in something, you have to make it yourself. Have you ever played music, Prouvaire?"
"No. My mother kept a pianoforte, but I never learned, but she used to play beautifully. Why? Do you play?"
"Not the pianoforte. Alexandre got me a flute for my birthday present, and he's been trying to teach me on his days off. I'm only asking because it's the most wonderful feeling in the world. It's something to put hope in."
"You make it sound kind of magical," Jehan said. "And in so few words, too. How do you learn to put things like that?"
"It's kind of in the atmosphere of the quartier. Are you asking for the sake of your poems?"
"Yes," he admitted. "Being around all of you today has made me feel horribly mediocre, even if I will be studying at La Sorbonne in a few months."
"You'll pick up on it if you come back enough," Luca said casually, "and I do expect you back, Prouvaire. I might yell at you sometimes, but you really are good company."
"I feel the same way about you, Mademoiselle Luca. I'll be sure to see you again."
"Here's your flat, Prouvaire," she said, pulling to a stop. "I'll see you soon."
"Should I write before I—," Jehan began, but Luca was already on her way down the street.
"Sorry to run like this, Prouvaire, but Morrel thinks I've been out running errands all this time!"
"Luca!" he scolded with a smile on his face. She grinned back, and then turned a corner out of sight.
Jehan was still smiling when he reached his rooms. Yes, he certainly would be returning to the home of the light-eyed girl. Maybe he would ask her older brothers about the meetings Grantaire was talking about, too. He shuffled through his mail, which he had picked up on the way upstairs, and sighed contentedly. Then, he took a pen out and wrote his first good verse in years:
The noontime sun is in her hair;
Her eyes soak in the day.
She sheds her sunlight everywhere;
Don't dare stand in her way.
A/N: Hope you all enjoyed my attempt to steer Luca away from Mary Sue territory. Remember, any and all feedback is appreciated!