"You need to hold on, Konstin." The voice is soft, the faint trace of an accent twisting his heart to hear it. He has not heard that voice in so long, and the soft cadence of it conjures the image of a fireplace, the room lit by a soft glow, a warm chest behind his back, the ticking of a pocket watch and an arm strong around his waist, holding him in place, the voice gently correcting his pronunciation. Roll the 'r' a little less, Konstin. You are doing are so well.
His lips struggle to form the name, the memory of the shape of it a pang of pain in his heart. He has not spoken that name in years, has not been able to bring himself to, has cradled it close and thought of him often but speaking of him was impossible.
"Na…dir." It breaks on his tongue, and the voice is gentle shushing him.
"Don't try to speak, Konstin. Don't try to speak. It is more important that you rest now." A flicker of a smile, sad and kind in that creased old face, olive eyes shining with tears. "You need to save your strength."
A soft brush of a hand over his forehead, and the veil closes over his thoughts again.
"When did you last eat?" Minette's voice is stern, and Marguerite casts her mind back, struggling to remember. When did she last eat? Was it yesterday? The day before? She had a bite of something, she thinks, but the very thought of eating makes her feel ill.
"I…" She trails off, and Minette makes a moue of distaste.
"Don't tell me you don't remember! Marguerite! I know you have an awful lot to worry about, but that is no excuse. No wonder you swooned."
Swooned is a strong word, Marguerite thinks but does not answer, knowing that Minette would not be impressed. In truth, she didn't really swoon. She just got a little bit light-headed as she stood up from sitting with Edouard (Edouard, blessedly, is still asleep and so is unaware of the fact that Minette is currently trying to smother her with attention), and Minette (unfortunately) happened to be in the room checking on a Lieutenant with a head wound (he will likely die in the next couple of hours, which is no great surprise considering the fact that Carrière diagnosed him with a haemorrhage in the brain. The surprising thing is that he's held on this long.) And the moment Minette saw her sway she was on her, guiding her back down into the chair and talking to her in a soothing voice, as if she were some sort of an invalid, and pouring her a glass of water from the pitcher and insisting that she drink it slowly. (Though Marguerite will admit that did help to steady her, but she just needed to move a little less slowly and she would have been fine.)
"…I know you haven't slept either…" Minette is still carrying on, but how was Marguerite supposed to sleep? Konstin with an infection and Antoine worrying himself into a state and Edouard's fever resolutely refusing to go down not to mention the load of men that came in gassed and had to have their eyes dressed and their lungs checked and some of them are in a bad state. Where was there ever time to sleep? Or at least to sleep without waking every few minutes and some new horrible worry on her mind?
(Not that she tried sleeping, to be honest. It seemed like a waste of time when it was never going to happen. She has spent more time in the chapel these last few days than in bed.)
"…no protesting…you're going to have some broth and go to bed or else I will tell Matron that you're not looking after yourself!"
No no no no no don't tell Matron!
Going to bed is the last thing she wants to do, but if the alternative is that Minette will tell Matron…
She supposes she'll manage to swallow the broth somehow.
He could not stay lying down. If he stayed lying down a moment longer he might actually have gone mad. He has laid there quite patiently for days and it has not made a difference to Konstin. He is still feverish, still ill, and Antoine's heart still twists painfully each time he murmurs, each time he asks for someone. (Last time it was Nadir he called for, and Antoine thought he might faint to hear that name again. Even though it's been years his arms can still feel how he cradled Konstin to him as he wept and it was painful enough to hear him faintly ask for his Papa but to hear him ask for Nadir…)
No. He really could not stay lying down.
And that was why he asked the nurse, the kindly nurse who seems to be the one who spends the most time trying to lower Konstin's fever by laying damp cloths on his head and at his throat (and Antoine's eyes watered when he saw the chains of the Saint Anthony and the wedding band back around his neck as she pulled the sheets down), the one whom Marguerite has called Amélie, if she would help him over to Konstin's bed. He knew he could not make it himself, his wound protested at the mere thought, tingling with pain that made him stifle a gasp, and she hesitated, but only for a moment before she nodded.
And that is how he has come to find himself, sitting in the chair beside Konstin's bed and a blanket draped around his shoulders. She gave him another dose of morphine, just a small one, enough that the tiredness does not weigh him down though the pain is dulled away again, and he curls his hand gently around Konstin's wrist, unwilling to take his hand in front of her in case it makes her wonder.
(His wrist feels so delicate, and if Antoine squeezes he can feel the pulse brushing against his fingertips, and his eyes water to feel that Konstin has a pulse even though he knows he has, he knows.)
Up close, it is easy to see the wounds to Konstin's face. Before he could only see part of it, and he remembers too well the way the blood coated the left side and now he can see the gash over his left eye, and the other one slicing down his cheekbone. He could not see the bandage over the eye before and he shudders at the sight of it, a voice whispering at the back of his mind I hope it does not blind him and he shakes that voice away, shakes it, such voices are no good now, no good to him or to Konstin though he feels nauseous at the very thought.
There are so many things he could say. So many things he wants to say. Words of love, of gentleness. Promises to be here, to always be here, to never leave him. Memories of their being close, of nights spent in each other's arms. How he loves Konstin more than anything else in the world, how he needs him, needs him so badly and he can't die, he can't.
But he can't speak, can't speak any of them, because the nurse will hear and the nurse will know and she cannot be allowed to know, she cannot.
Oh, how he aches to cradle him close. Aches to hold him and rock him and kiss him forever, to keep him safe, to be together, just the two of them and no one else, they do not need anyone else, not when they have each other. But even taking his hand is more than he can risk, and how can he kiss him now when anyone could see?
He is still fighting the tears in his eyes when he lays his head down on the pillow next to Konstin's, and words slip from his lips in Persian. Persian. Nadir taught him Persian years ago, taught him and Konstin and Guillaume when they were only boys and he has never lost the words though it has been so long since he needed them, so long.
(Konstin told him he should take on translation work instead of active duty. But how could he take on translation work when Konstin was at the Front? Konstin could have taken on translation work too, they both could have, they could have done it together, but to stay safely behind the lines when so many did not even have that option was abhorrent to them both, but how Antoine wishes now that they had. How he wishes.)
The words come in Persian, and Russian, all of the things he could not say in their own French for fear of discovery and he knows if Konstin can hear he will understand, he knows.
And as if in affirmation, hardly has Antoine murmured his love when Konstin's head turns, ever so slightly, towards him on the pillow, and his uncovered eye flickers open for the barest moment so that Antoine can see a glimmer of golden iris before it slips closed again and Konstin sighs, and the words all catch in Antoine's throat so that he can only murmur them thickly through his tears.
Persian, murmured words, hushed and faint. He can feel them, sense them, and over the pounding of his heart he strains to listen to them closer, but the thread of their meaning is lost to him. Sweet Persian. That voice has murmured those words into his skin, breathed them into his throat, so many times, and he whimpered beneath that soft breath, tears welling in his eyes. He is so tired, too tired to pick out what they are, the pain burning in his stomach, but just to feel them against him, their soft lilting…
The words wash over him, and wrap him in his dreams.
She has always heard that sodomy is a sin. Legal, but a sin. But the fact that Antoine and Konstin love each other does not make them sodomites. How can something as good, as pure as love, ever possibly be a sin? It only means that they each need the other to survive, need to know the other is breathing too, that his heart is still beating. And it comes to her, comes to her all of a sudden, that if Konstin dies then Antoine, surely, will die too. Will simply give up fighting and let himself fade away.
And Antoine cannot die. She could not bear it if Antoine died.
But is it natural? Is it the way things are supposed to be? If they love each other then they do not love women (and, thinking back, she cannot remember either of them ever properly courting a woman, though she always put it down to their being too busy as officers, too caught up in military affairs to care). And if they do not love women, then they will not have children. And if they love each other and do not have children because they do not love women, then is that treason?
The sodomites are treasonous, want the Germans to win. That is what all of the whispers are, all of the ones she has heard.
But if Konstin and Antoine are Commandants, are leading the fight against the Germans then they cannot want the Germans to win, and whether or not they are intimate with women should not come into it.
Surely if they love each other, it is because God intended it. Everyone is made in his image, after all.
But if everyone is made in his image then the Germans and the Austrians must be too, and if the Germans and the Austrians are too, then what makes them any different?
If German men can love each other the way Antoine seems to love Konstin (and they do, she knows, half-remembering the whole scandalous affair with Eulenberg though it seemed so very far removed from her them, did not seem to matter at all) then do the German people say that their sodomites are treasonous and want the French to win?
Does it matter? Does any of it matter?
Marguerite is giving herself a headache thinking such things, and she sighs and closes her eyes, shutting out the view of her dull quarters. Minette has not decided to stay by her bed to ensure that she gets some sleep, and that is for the best. Better to let Minette think that she has rested than for her to know that she has instead lain here in bed pondering unanswerable questions.
What does it matter if Antoine loves Konstin? Konstin is alive today (fighting a dreadful infection and unconscious and delirious when he is conscious and at death's door, if he is still alive, if his heart has not thudded to a stop in her absence and her stomach churns painfully though there is nothing in it except tea and broth), alive because Antoine pulled him out of a shell crater. And if the fact that Antoine loves him is the reason he is alive, then it can hardly be treasonous.
"I will keep your secret," she whispers, her voice hushed in the silence of the room and neither Konstin nor Antoine can hear her anyway, "I will keep your secret." The words weigh as solemn as a vow on her tongue, and she swallows to hold them close to her. Keep their secret. It is the very least she can do for them.
The words are soft, faint, but each one is one he clings to, and though he is too tired to open his eyes, he knows the voice is his father's. The words are so much clearer than anyone else's, the voice low and soft, cool fingertips resting against his cheek. "Oh, my poor, dear Konstantin. The worry you have caused your mother. I do not think she could bear it if…if you were to succumb. For her sake, if for no one else's, you need to keep fighting. She loves you. She loves you so very much, and she needs you to live." A sigh, and the pain throbs deep in his stomach for a moment before passing again as the voice continues. "I, well, I was never what I should have been to her. She deserved so much more than what I could give. I hurt her so, so terribly, and I think she was happy for a time until I—until I—well, but she could have been so much happier." Faintly, the voice a bare breath, "she made me very happy." A glimmer of hazel iris through the darkness. "You made her so happy. You gave her hope back, after—after me. You gave her a reason to live, and for that alone—for that alone you need to survive now."
The silence stretches on, and there is only the soft hush of breathing, like water breaking gently on the shoreline. In, and out. And in. And out. And in. And out. A rhythm that feels like silk, the softest thing in the world, until the voice comes again, the low voice of his father. "I wronged her, Christine, and I wronged de Chagny, and I wronged Nadir, my only friend, and, and I wronged you without even knowing about you. I should have been better. I should have tried. If I had only been there…" The voice fades away again, words slipping from his grasp and he is aware of sharp, stinging pain in his leg that makes him whimper, the rustling of fabric. There is something cold pressed to his chest and he shivers, fingers fumbling at his throat. A voice, a different voice, not his father's, murmurs something far away, but then his father's voice is drowning it out again. "You can survive, my dear boy, you can. I know it is difficult. I know the pain is so terrible and I wish I could help you, but if you keep fighting…I wish I had fought harder…"
He loses the voice, loses it and can't find it however he strains his ears. But there is soft Persian that feels like heat on his skin and the heavy sweet fumes of opium. It is so long since he inhaled the heavy fumes of opium. So very long…
His eyes flicker open. The light is misty, filtered and strained and dimly he sees a face, pressed up beside his. A face he knows, though it takes a minute for it to coalesce. Slanted nose, high cheekbones, soft lips that feel like petals pressed to his own—Antoine. Antoine? If he could, if he—if he was able to raise his hand he would trace that face to be certain it is real, not dreamed, not a vision that will dissipate at his very touch, but his—his hand is too heavy, and Antoine's eyes are closed, his lips slightly parted. Oh, those lips.
"The boy cares for you very much," a voice murmurs from his other side, and his eyes roll, seek out the source, and he finds a figure in black, a face he can only barely make out with a downcast smile and golden eyes. "We have never been normal, you or I. Never been like anyone else and I—I dare say it is in you to love him too. It is hardly the worst thing either of us has ever done."
The words linger in his mind, sink into his bones. In you to love him too. In you to love him. Love him.
I do. Konstin's lips are too stiff to form the words, and he can only think them, the room fading from view. I do love him.
And in the space between one breath and another, darkness falls once more.
A/N: I hope you have enjoyed this chapter, and now, a little historical context, for those who are into that sort of thing. For those who are not, forgive me. I am a history nerd.
Sodomy was decriminalised in France in 1791 as part of the Revolution, however homosexuals were often still persecuted under public order and morality laws, with homosexuality being seen as inherently immoral. During the war, homosexuality was also associated with pro-German tendencies in both France and Britain thanks in part to the Eulenberg scandal (1907-1909) when prominent members of the Kaiser's cabinet and entourage were outed. Homosexuality was also seen as treasonous, particularly in France, because it does not result in procreation and so could not increase the number of baby boys being born who could grow up to be in the French army, a particularly prominent concern due to the high number of war casualties who needed to be replaced. And of course, there were fears around venereal disease too, which ran rampant through the armies and led to a lot of strict legislation around prostitution and unmarried women being allowed near base camps.
All in all, the war years were a very poor time to be gay, and though it was legal to be gay it was not permissible to be gay. It is understandable that Konstin and Antoine are wary of being seen as too close. They would both be aware of all of this, and Marguerite would be aware of a great deal of it, even if only through whispers and rumours.
(On an irrelevant sidenote, lesbians were not seen as being nearly so problematic at any point in history, and for a long time many people did not believe it was possible for women to be attracted to each other. But that's something to be addressed another day.)
Up next: What can I say that is not spoilery?