A/N: Very shamefaced to finally return to this. It was an awkward chapter to write, which is rather par for the course when one is writing the very gauche Marius. I'm behind in reviews etc, but will try to catch up with the fanfic element of our community!

The kitten story is inspired by a real historical figure whose identity is currently escaping my magpie mind. The nekkid cancan is also based on a real incident at the Carnival of 1832, and I've had it in my head canon that Courfeyrac was involved, but the full story will be told another day.

One told me, Heracleitus, of thy death and brought me to tears,

and I remembered how often we two in talking put the sun to rest.

Thou, methinks, Halicarnasian friend, art askes long and long ago;

but thy nightingales live still, whereon Hades, snatcher of all things, shall not lay his hand

Callimachus, epigram on Heraclitus (translated by A W Mair)

Combeferre was lead into the salon with assurances that his host would be with him shortly. He could hear the rise and fall of feminine voices in the hall, calling from room to room, and the occasional tap of light feet moving backwards and forwards to the accompaniment of the odd masculine interjection that was evidently overruled by mature female tones. Some household or family issue evidently had Pontmercy's attention, so Combeferre politely diverted his own.

This was the public face of the household, so he occupied his time in waiting by examining the contents of room and divining what he could of its occupants. For the most part, it was furnished in conventional taste – the stiffly padded, slippery brocades of the chairs indicated its formal use, but even here, in this outward presentation to the wider world, there were touches of family life. A volume of Baudelaire – Pontmercy's? His wife? An offspring of advanced tastes? - sat on one of the occasional tables. A glass casket with a dried bouquet, holding some personal significance of which he could not be sure...a wedding, a gift. A wax doll under glass.

Amidst all the sentimental prints on the walls, formal portraits and one large still-life of rather over-ripe fruit over the mantelpiece, he could make out one or two lithographs depicting the 1848 Revolution. It was a curious addition to the conventional reception for visitors to Baron and Baroness Pontmercy.

He rose to the footsteps of ...his host? Combeferre hesitated at the appearance of a comfortably rotund man who entered with an easy manner and a smile of welcome. His hair was receding from his high forehead, emphasised by the way in with it was combed straight back from his brow, and although he could only be in his forties it was so liberally streaked with gray it was evident it would soon be completely white. It was matched with an iron grey beard, and the figure before him wore the sober frock-coat and large gold watch chain of the thoroughly bourgeois.

It took Combeferre a moment to overlay the memory of the slim, shabbily dressed, dark haired figure of the boy he had once known over the man who stood here before him, thinking he must be mistaken. This could not be Pontmercy. He had not yet managed the connection when the man spoke – "Combeferre!" - extending a hand in greeting and using the other to touch his guest's arm in easy affability, guiding him back to the seats. Combeferre inclined his head in acknowledgement.

Only the eyes, he realised. Only in those fine dark eyes could he really trace the young man he had known, grown and matured now into material well-being and personal ease of manner.

"I hope I haven't called at an inconvenient time..."

"Not at all," Pontmercy waved him into a chair. "A minor domestic matter. My eldest daughter is getting married, and I was called on to arbitrate between her, her mother and one of our long-standing female retainers on matters of wax orange blossom trim and organza. They will ignore my opinion, of course, and rightfully so."

"I congratulate you and your family on the happy event," Combeferre said politely. Pontmercy smiled broadly.

"So much fussy nonsense about weddings these days. All these English customs – honeymoons and second-day dresses...I had no idea until my little Adelie and my dear wife started on their planning what was involved, and that it took more planning than a military campaign." Pontmercy hesitated, and just for an instant Combeferre caught a glimpse of the gauche boy he had known, awkward and ill at ease. He smoothed over the moment.

"I am delighted to find you settled in such happy circumstances." It was time to edge around the purpose of his visit, lest they be caught up in endless civilities. "I regret that last time we met – you may not recall it – we didn't have much opportunity to speak. You had, I think, been married some twelvemonth at the time."

"Ah...some wine?" Pontmercy asked with the entry of a maid bearing a tray with a carafe.

"Please."

The red liquid splashed into cut crystal, and Pontmercy took an appreciative draught before resuming the conversation.

"I recall it very well," he said. "Mme de Girardin's salon. I was so terribly..." He smiled with a little self-deprecation. "To be frank, I'm a little ashamed of myself. I was so startled, you see. It had all been unreal. Those terrible events followed by long and ghastly days and nights. And then...there you were."

"You mentioned you had been ill."

"Yes – I was wounded when the barricades fell." His hand rose instinctively to the side of his head, where a faintly puckered scar could be seen extending down from the retreating hairline. His fingers hovered uncertainly for a moment. With the change of expression, there was the brooding youth Combeferre recognised well. "I think it was the thought of she who was to become my angel-wife that saw me through those long weeks. And when they passed, and I was wholly myself again, or nearly so, the barricades all seemed like such a dark dream. But seeing you, it fell into place. It was real."

Combeferre remembered his own reaction to encountering that pallid face again in 1834, wreathed in curly hair, standing with the old stiff formality but now, most surprisingly, with a young lady's arm tucked in his. When his eyes met Pontmercy's, when he saw the recognition, the mutual disbelief, he had felt as if the ground lurched a little beneath his feet.

Pontmercy was only in their company with Courfeyrac – part of that curious, diverse entourage of friends with which he travelled. If Marius was present, it was because Courfeyrac was as well.

And now here was Pontmercy, and Courfeyrac was...nowhere.

The pang was no less vivid in 1856 than it had been more than twenty years ago. Once again, he felt keenly how much he missed – how much he needed – Courfeyrac's smile and Courfeyrac's laughter.

"It is understandable," Combeferre said softly.

"You do understand? I...one does not like to admit to the breakdown of one's nerves. But you know." He looked at his hands. "For years, I would start when I heard a sash window slam to, or if a housemaid dropped a tray."

"And the dreams."

"Yes."

Combeferre suddenly felt terribly sorry for this man. He had somehow been caught up in their wake, largely through Courfeyrac's sweeping personality, and he had been hurled into a maelstrom. "It was...I didn't smell gunpowder for years, but when my wife and I were attending a ceremony with my younger boy at the École Polytechnique and saw him at drill...I took a breath of it, and there I was. I could hear...I could see..." he shook himself. "You know, when I walked in just now, I expected Courfeyrac to be only one step behind you."

Of course. Courfeyrac, the link who connected them.

"I am very glad you have undertaken this work," Pontmercy said, and the boy in him retreated again. "I should be delighted to assist in whatever way I can. Here are my notes," He took a sheaf of papers from a sideboard and handed them over. "As complete as I could make them in answer to the questions you sent me."

Combeferre was too disciplined to grab the papers, and he managed to refrain from doing more than leaf through the pages. The names of the dead met his eyes – snatches of conversations, descriptions...new information. But mixed with his eagerness was a sense of trepidation.

There were many men and women alive who recalled the Amis. He had received a long letter from an advocate in Strasbourg who related an adventure with Courfeyrac and Bahorel in which they had managed to secure three Delvigne rifles with the help of a sympathetic National Guardsman and a late night race through streets and over rooftops. The man had missed the émeute, attending his father's funeral after his death from the epidemic, and the lingering regret coupled with guilt at his own survival was palpable in his letter. There were former students of the Sorbonne who had told him they remembered Enjolras only as a cold and silent man, others who spoke of him with regard and even affection. One of his fellow Deputies in the Assembly had produced an entire sheath of correspondence he had preserved in which Enjolras had outlined his ideas on everything from the Ventôse Decreesto the role of caricaturists and satire in political discourse. Several members of the medical fraternity he had once belonged to remembered Joly – forever linked in their recollection with Bossuet. The scattered members of Jeune France had much to tell him about Prouvaire and Bahorel...Gautier had painted a vivid word picture of the two of them passed out in Borel's cellar after drinking too much of his highly toxic punch.

But most of all, they remembered Courfeyrac. Schoolfellows who had attended the Lycée Charlemagne with him, billiard playing comrades...One ex-mistress – now comfortably married to a grocer and with a brood of children – had shown Combeferre a lock of his hair, the faded silk ribbon less vibrant than the still-bright chestnut curl it was tied around. "Tell me how he could be dead?" she had asked, her solemnity robbing the words of their mawkishness. "How his laughter could be dead?"

"Thank you," he said to Pontmercy.

"I wish I could be of more assistance. My memories are not very clear – they are impressions and ideas, but it has been so long. I did write a few notes some years afterwards."

"Oh?" Combeferre was curious.

"It is a strange thing..." he hesitated, and it was possible to actually see the very moment in which he decided to confide in Combeferre, a man with whom he had never been close. A flickering of expression. "It's Courfeyrac, you see."

"I was so happy those first few years of my marriage," he continued. "The past had been a dark pall that lifted. I was never one of you, not really. In my memory, the smoke and flame distorted your figures and you had sunk into shadows...it seemed I had been permitted to strive by the side of giants, and as much as I admired you all, it was not my part to think of myself as one of you. And they were all gone – that old man with the flag, Mabeauf, and Courfeyrac...all my friends. In one moment swept from the stage. My wife was my lover, my friend, my confidante. I was reunited with my estranged grandfather. I made some foolish mistakes in the early years of my marriage – I was still so young – but it was a new epoch and I had been shaken out of my apathy and inward looking vision to responsibility and adulthood.

"It must have been three years later, when I was walking down the rue de Rivoli, and I remembered a spring morning there with Courfeyrac and him telling me he had a new client for one of my translations. I was unprepared for what I felt – a sudden, overwhelming need for him, for his warmth and his humour and his expansiveness. I had not realised I missed him so much, but in that moment I wanted more than anything else in the world to see him. And it all came back to me...how could I have been so blind as to not see what he did for me?"

"Courfeyrac never counted debts," Combeferre said gently.

"No...no, he didn't. And perhaps because he didn't tally them, I wasn't as acutely conscious of them as I should have been. From the day I arrived in Paris – friendless and ill-equipped to deal with either the city or its inhabitants – to the night I arrived on his doorstep and he took me in without a word, he was unstinting in everything he gave. I was grateful, of course...grateful in a perfunctory way. But I was more conscious, by the end, of the sting of debt than of his generosity in giving. More than that...I made so many mistakes in our friendship. I guarded my secrets jealously, made excuses to myself that Courfeyrac could never appreciate how special my affairs were, when I realise now of course that if anyone could have understood, it was he. But I believed my circumstances, my feelings, absolutely unique and thus far beyond his comprehension. What a fool I was."

"Courfeyrac would call you a fool as well – but never forget that he would have done it with all affection, and most likely have better understood your reticence better than you give him credit for."

Pontmercy smiled wanly. "Perhaps you are right. I had so little experience of friendship, you see – my upbringing was very solitary in terms of boys my own age, and I did not realise how rare a man Courfeyrac was, or how wonderful his friendship was.

Combeferre smiled, then - smiled broadly - because not all memories have a sting.

The sound was so soft at first that Combeferre couldn't be sure what it was. It was almost like the distant cry of a child, hardly heard over the winter wind outside and the murmur of voices in the cafe. But when it was repeated, it was unmistakeable – it was the mewl of a kitten. He looked first to where Prouvaire was seated, but the poet looked up, apparently as mystified as he was. Another soft cry, and he shifted his gaze to Courfeyrac with raised eyebrows.

Of course it had to be Courfeyrac. He had come into the Musain shortly before and for some reason had refused to remove his greatcoat in spite of the fact that they had a good fire going – unusual, as he loved to bask in warmth but disliked being too bundled up indoors, hating anything that stifled his perpetual movement. There was some prank here afoot, no doubt, but it was odd...Courfeyrac's practical jokes usually ran to something a bit more sophisticated than frogs in people's beds and animals concealed in coats. His air of absolute, wide-eyed innocence, however, convinced Combeferre that he was engaged in something out of the ordinary.

Prouvaire was evidently about to ask him something about his mewling coat when the sound came again – and this time it was echoed. Courfeyrac, it seemed, had more than one animal concealed on his person. And that was enough to draw Enjolras' attention. Their chief looked up from his newspaper with a questioning expression.

"Courfeyrac, what is that sound?"

"What sound? You're hearing things. I've told you before that too much sobriety leads to delusions..."

Enjolras fixed him with a look, and Courfeyrac sighed, digging his hands into his pockets. Out of each, he pulled a tiny, thin, bedraggled kitten – they could not be more than a few weeks old. He set them on the table.

"What are those?" Enjolras asked mildly.

"Your powers of observation are letting you down." Combeferre couldn't help smiling.

"I mean, why are you carrying kittens in your pockets?"

Courfeyrac surveyed them for a moment, then reached out a hand to caress the closest, a grin spreading across his face.

"Mittens!" He supplied. "They keep my hands warm in my pockets."

And then Prouvaire was bustling away to beg milk from Louison, Enjolras was shaking his head before raising his newspaper up again – only Combeferre caught his slight smile – and Courfeyrac was leaning across the table, scolding the tiny animals about their lack of good grooming, something no cat should forget. Of course, as it later emerged, he had found the two starving and shivering in the street on the way to the Musain, but as always he laughed off even the slightest good deed.

Combeferre was of two minds about including the incident in his writing. It was almost too pat, too neat as an illustration of Courfeyrac's character...and too liable to the sentimentality that Courfeyrac would have laughed at, unless it gave him an advantage with a sentimentally minded girl.

"Here," Pontmercy said, taking a Chinoiserie box from another drawer and extracting a piece of fabric. "I have nothing of his – not even a note – nothing save this."

He put an old cravat into Combeferre's hand...once it had been black, but now it had faded to a dark green. It was stained.

"It is the cravat he wore the day of the funeral...he tied it around my head at the barricades when I was wounded, and they removed it with the rest of my clothing when I was taken to my grandfather's house."

Combeferre swallowed hard and turned the scrap of material over in his hands. He felt a wave of grief at the sheer random nature of what was left of the past, what he had to work with to try and reconstruct his friends, to bring them to life on the page. This cravat had been nothing to Courfeyrac at the time – he had many that were more fashionable, but he had chosen one suitable for a funeral. And yet of all those wonderful, colourful cravats that he had tied with such care, this was the one that survived.

This was biography, he knew. He had spent hours poring over a page of Enjolras' jottings on scrap paper that had by chance survived, words and phrases for a speech, trying to use them to reconstruct the living idea of the man. He had searched in vain for some personal letters from Lesgle to give him more insight into his family, but the family line had died out. Prouvaire's sombre Huguenot family had burned all his correspondence, and all that had survived were his few published works – a poem here, a letter to the newspaper there - and some letters to friends.

All these fragments had become invested with so much importance because they had a faint necromancy, a power to bring back the dead, however distantly. But the resulting portrait could only ever be incomplete...what writings survived, what memories – coloured and distorted by the years as they were – anecdotes and incidental objects that had survived the attrition of time. By their mere survival they attained importance, and sometimes a significance beyond what was innate, and what it had actually meant in the totality of their lives.

But so much was lost and irrecoverable.

He would do his best. He would try to reclaim them. And he had to trust to his own innate questioning to ensure he didn't fill in the outlines he could sketch with tints and shades that were untruthful to the original.

"Thank you," he said, handing back the cravat to Pontmercy, noticing how reverently the man handled it, smoothing the old fabric with his hands. Courfeyrac, who had no time for relics of saints, would have laughed. "You have been very kind. I shall read the papers and then perhaps get back to you?"

"Please do! Or..." Pontmercy hesitated. "Would you stay just a while? I would like to...to speak of them. To speak of Courfeyrac. I did not wish to burden my wife, and later, when my circles of friends grew wider, it was not a topic one could casually broach, even with friends. It was all so hard to explain, and now that I'm with you I should very much like to speak to someone who knew him. I have missed him so. Sometimes that feeling comes on me again and I would give almost anything to have just an hour with him – the need of him is a longing that has never left me, only something I have become accustomed to with long use. He has become...almost a voice in my head. When my first child was born I heard him congratulating me, sometimes I can imagine him chiding me for timidity or exulting in my prosperity. It would be a joy to speak of him openly, as a reality that was rather than a ghost that is."

Combeferre settled himself into his chair with a grin, and allowed himself to indulge in the pleasure that was remembering Courfeyrac.

"Do you remember how 1832 dawned? Spring came early, and with it the rumours of cholera across the Chanel. It made carnival more frenzied than it had ever been known, in defiance of death. Joly and Bossuet demonstrated the Galop Infernal in the back room of the Musain, and I think even Enjolras laughed – or at least considered doing so. And it was the year that the can-can was introduced...Courfeyrac took it up immediately."

"I remember him trying to drag me to my feet in his rooms once to try and teach me," Pontmercy smiled. "It was...not to the taste of such a serious young insect as I was!"

"Did you ever hear how he smuggled a girl into Les Variétés to dance a can-can? His mistress, a rather voluptuous chorine – it was an idea cooked up between the two of them, de Beauvoir and d'Alton Shée...Courfeyrac had her draped in a heavy shawl, beneath which she wore nothing but her shoes and gloves. When she threw the shawl into Courfeyrac's arms and began to dance the can-can, the cry went up Vive Vénus...not even the police, crying of an outrage aux moeurs could intervene, driven back by the crowd. Courfeyrac helped her slip away while they beat back the gendarmes..."

They spoke for the better part of an hour, Pontmercy asking most of the questions, so eager to know all the things about Courfeyrac he had not asked the living man. But then, as the hour grew late, the household claimed Pontmercy once again. A servant brought a message from his wife that it was imperative he come and placate the cook whom, it seemed, objected to the idea of additional help being hired for the wedding feast, insisting she could do it all by herself.

"One more thing," Combeferre recalled before taking his leave. "Something occurred to me after I wrote with those questions. Grantaire – did you see him at all?"

"Grantaire..." Pontmercy thought for a moment. "That rather...inconvenient fellow? Always bellowing and talking over everyone?"

"He would answer to that description, I imagine."

"I don't remember him at all. Why would he have been there?"

"He was – at least, at the very beginning." Courfeyrac, he remembered, had gone upstairs once and reported him sleeping off his great bout of drinking. He has a cloud of fumes around him... I put his head on a coat so he can sleep it off. "And at the end, it would seem. His body was found with the others."

"If he was there, I don't remember him at all. I don't think he was fighting, but then, we did not know each other well, and I might not have seen him. And I'm afraid with my injuries, my memory is not entirely to be trusted."

"Never mind," said Combeferre. Had Grantaire died as an accidental casualty, a mere bystander caught in the wrong place when the cafe was stormed? It would not be the worst sin to lay at the National Guard's account...but he feared he might never know, and Grantaire's end might slip into complete oblivion.

He could almost imagine Grantaire's derisive snort, as if that were just what was to be expected.