Antoine's soft tappings on the wall are a comfort, but Konstin is too tired to try and piece them together, to make sense of them. His mind is too slow, his thoughts too full of his men, those ghosts that appear before him each time he closes his eyes. It is his duty (was his duty, before he awoke to find himself lying in that hospital with Antoine in the next bed) to call the name of each man under his command when the lorries stopped carrying them in from up the line. In the cold morning light he would stand, Dupuis handing him list after list of names, and he would call each one and they would answer if they were present. And if a man did not answer, he would call the name again, to give him another chance, fervently praying that he would answer, that he was merely distracted, had blanked out a moment, and was not forever detained. And when no answer came the second time, he would put a mark beside the name, his throat tight, and order himself to remain composed until the men were dismissed.

He would have tea, after, and Dupuis would join him and pretend not to see the generous measure of brandy that Konstin would lace his own with, and they would set about the work of writing to kin, mothers and fathers and sisters and wives, almost never brothers because brothers were usually in a unit somewhere too, and Dupuis would always have a few particular words about the family, and have the addresses ready to hand.

(When he wrote to Clara Henri he left her letter until the last, unable to bring himself to write to her, thinking all the time about Dupuis' mention of the little girl (a five year old, Alba) and the baby (still in the womb), and the cruelty of it all, the sheer unfairness of another father and another baby yet unborn was such that he lay his head down on the desk and wept.)

If he were to take a roll call now, how many of his men would be left to answer? Not Mazet, or Robert. Henri, of course, already had his time not to answer when they last came down from the line and he called the name even knowing there would be no answer, acting for himself that everything was as usual.

Would Dupuis answer?

Surely he would, surely. Just because his face is featured in the pantheon of ghosts does not mean something happened to him. And Konstin sees again the way he glanced at him, a question in his eyes, before he went to attend to a man wounded. Dupuis would have to answer. It could not be any other way.

His heart stutters at the very thought of anything happening to Dupuis, and a moment later there are footsteps pulling him from the fear. He looks up, half-expecting it to be Anja, but the cadence is wrong and tears prickle his eyes at the sight of Émile, framed in the doorway, then crossing the room. Émile settles into the chair beside the bed, and Konstin has a sudden flash of him lying on the ground, his uniform torn open and blood welling out of his stomach, his knuckles aching trying to rub his chest, willing him to breathe.

His breath catches in his throat, and the memory, the nightmare, dissipates, and this is Émile as he is, sixteen years and looking at once young and impossibly aged, lines under his eyes and his face pale. Émile, real and sitting here, not a dreamed phantom that died under his hands. Real, and whole, and fresh tears trickle from Konstin's eyes and he raises his good hand and wipes them away.

"Anytime I looked in before you were asleep," Émile's voice is soft, deeper than Konstin remembers it being, and as he looks into Émile's tired eyes, he wonders how long it is since his little brother stopped smiling.

Soft lips, pressed to his forehead. A line of kisses, each one contiguous, touching so that his face is mapped by those soft kisses as if they were part of a cartographic endeavour. Mapped and explored and charted forever, held safe in Konstin's mind. The lips shift, press to Antoine's own, and he opens his mouth to give the probing tongue admittance, groans, a soft hand cupped around his hip and—

—and he opens his eyes to an empty room, his bed too narrow to hold him and Konstin both. And tears prickle Antoine's eyes, the pain tingling beneath his ribs drowned out by the hollowness in his chest, the numbness that Konstin is not here.

When will they be together like that again? How much longer must they wait? How much?

It is soft footsteps that wake him from a light sleep. It is not very long since Émile left, and he has not been able to doze off fully. The pain in his leg is particularly difficult, throbbing just a little deeper than usual, and the stiffness in his wrist is irritating.

His eyes flicker open, his vision blurred but he blinks several times and it mostly clears, and he catches sight of Marguerite in the doorway. She looks so very pale, and drawn. He never noticed before. (Why did he not notice?) Likely it is just tiredness though. Everyone is tired now. He can feel the weariness in his bones.

Still, weary or not, she is just standing in the doorway. And if she is as worn out as she looks, she should be sitting down.

He forces a smile, the muscles in his face aching, unaccustomed to such a movement now, and hoarsely whispers, "Come in."

Her lips twitch, very slightly, and she nods, and walks slowly across the room to settle into the chair by the bed which Émile has so recently vacated, and her voice is low as she asks, "How do you feel, Konstin?"

How does he feel? Huh. She's starting with the easy questions, and Marguerite is always such an honest girl that it is best to tell her the truth. "Tired. Sore."

Up close, he can see the dark circles under her eyes, how blanched her skin is, and he wonders vaguely, distantly, if he looks similar. He cannot say that he has had a very restful time, not with the—the terrible things he's seen in his dreams.

"Is the morphine not helping?"

Only very little. "Usually it is reasonable relief, but it—it lingers a bit."

They are talking as if they are people who have not seen each other in years, treading carefully on half-known ground. Has Antoine told her? About his—his old unfortunate habit? Or has he kept it a secret?

Would that the morphine would help him to sleep now.

And the vision comes again, of mud and fog, and shells screaming in the distance.

Marguerite worked in the hospital. Perhaps—perhaps she might be able to help, might be able to tell him something, and if she can tell him something and he could know for certain then maybe, maybe the nightmares would not be what they are.

"Marguerite, I wonder if—if you could find out for me who—who the casualties were under my command." His voice is halting, and a chill runs down his spine just at getting the words out, makes him shiver. Another flash, lying stiff beneath the fog, shrouded in a world of silence and not another soul to be seen.

If possible, Marguerite grows even paler, her face bloodless.

"I know one," she whispers, and a tear glimmers in her eye. He inhales a breath, bracing himself. Who? Who could it be?

"Who?"

She bites her lip, trembling, and her fingers clutch his as if he is a lifeline, an anchor. "Ed—Ed—" she clears her throat, licks her lips. "Capitaine Dupuis."

And even as his mind chants no no no no no he asks, he has to ask even though her white face must be answer enough. "Wounded? Or—or—" Please, God, let him only be wounded.

But Marguerite shakes her head ever so slightly, a sob tearing itself from her throat.

It is as if the world stops turning. Konstin's heart stalls in his chest, his breath catching. It is impossible. Impossible! Dupuis can't be dead, he can't! He's not allowed to die! He's supposed to keep every man alive, that's his job, his duty! To search for any sign of life, to seek out pulses and keep pressure on wounds and look him, Konstin, look him square in the eye with that half-defiant gaze and say, I think he has a chance, sir.

He can't be dead! How can he be dead?

"How?" Konstin breathes, and his fingers tighten around Marguerite's in return. "Do you know how it—"

"Peritonitis." Her voice is faint, but he cannot look at her face, not now, must look down at their joined hands or else he will crack, will fall and not be able to piece himself back together. He can feel the trembling already in his limbs and it aggravates the pain but what does the pain matter now? "He—he had shrapnel in his leg, the right leg, and it—it was too close to the artery so they—they amputated it. Above the knee." Amputated it. Above the knee. Right leg. And Konstin sees again Dupuis standing before him in the mist, balanced on his left leg, the right missing, blood dripping from the stump, and his stomach churns and he retches, and he feels hands rolling him onto his side but he has nothing to bring up, and his stomach clenches painfully again and again, Marguerite's hand rubbing soothing circles into his back.

"Go on," he whispers when he gets his breath, when the nausea subsides, "go on."

"There was damage to his spine too, blunt force, but the—the surgeons thought he might be—might be paralysed." She pauses, swallows, and Konstin has to fight another shudder, another wave of nausea that he manages to keep at bay. "I attended his surgery, for the spine and—and the leg. But he—he wouldn't recover from it. His blood pressure and pulse were—were too weak. And they—the surgeons they—they realised they'd," her voice catches, "they'd missed bleeding. His spleen. And after more surgery for that he—he developed the peritonitis."

The words hang in the air, and still Konstin dare not look up at her, tries to keep his eyes focused on the open doorway but the tears blur his vision so that it is only a hollow, a gap in the wall, and Marguerite's breathing is harsh as she whispers, "It was when—when you were fighting your own infection. And they thought you were going to die, Konstin, they did, and Antoine was—was so upset and I—I couldn't bear to see you like that so I stayed with Dup—with Edouard and he was so ill but I couldn't bear to leave him and he just kept worsening and worsening, and nothing was working, and then Amélie told me that you had started to recover but Edouard wasn't recovering and—and I had to leave him to help with casualties and Minette told me he was asking for me so I went back to him, and Dumas was there too, the curé, and I knew, I knew, but I stayed with him and I held his hand and I held him and I kissed him, and he—and he died, Konstin, he died." Her voice breaks, and pain lances through Konstin's heart at the realisation, the piercing realisation, that she loved him.

Dupuis is dead. And she loved him.

He rolls onto his back, and now, only now, looks up at her, at the tears streaming down her cheeks, at the broken hollowness in her eyes, and he disentangles their fingers, wraps his good arm around her, and draws her down to him, so that she lays her head on his shoulder, and he nuzzles into her hair to hide his own tears as she weeps into his neck.

How long they stay like that he cannot tell, and it does not matter. He is too numb to keep track of the time, his thoughts a tangle of what Marguerite has said, of the terrible way that Dupuis, dear, wonderful, noble Dupuis, the loyalest of all of his men, the protector, the carer, the guardian, the terrible way that he suffered.

And it is only when he feels no new tears against his neck, when his own tears have dried rough on his face, that he whispers, his voice barely more than a croak, "You loved him, didn't you?"

She does not speak, only whimpers, and nods, and he fights the new twisting ache in his chest. "Have you—have you told anyone? Your mother? My mother?"

A slight shake of her head, and he rubs his hand gently up her back, the way it used to soothe Anja when she was a little girl, but Marguerite is far from Anja or a little girl. "Tell them," he whispers. "Tell them." And he feels the impression of the stem of an opium pipe between his fingers, smells the heavy sweet fumes as if they drift on the breeze, and he swallows. "It is not good to keep such things bottled up inside of you. If he meant that much to you, if he—if he felt the same about you," and she nods, and his heart lurches and all he can think is, oh, Dupuis what did you do?, "then Dup—Edouard would want you tell them. For your own sake, Marguerite. For your own sake."

It is a long time later, and Marguerite is lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling, when she hears the soft tapping at the door, and she knows it is time. Maman. It must be Maman. She has not spoken to her since she got back from the hospital, has not even seen her, but Konstin is right. She needs to tell her.

"Come in," she calls softly, and the door opens slowly, Maman slipping in, her face pale and hair in a chignon, and something about her pinched features, and the creases around her eyes makes her look older than Marguerite has ever seen her.

She closes the door softly behind her, and settles on the edge of the bed, and Marguerite nuzzles into her side, like she used to do when she was only a little girl who wanted a hug, long before she became a woman who needs so much more than a hug, and Maman takes the hint, and lies down on the bed, and draws Marguerite gently into her arms.

Marguerite nuzzles into her chest, and closes her eyes, and Maman's hand is gentle rubbing circles into her back. The silence stretches on, disturbed only the sound of their breathing. And it comes to Marguerite, unbidden, that this is the way Antoine used to hold her when she was small and afraid of the dark. He would hold her, and she would cuddle into him, and encased by her brother's arms it was impossible to see how anything might be wrong with the world.

If only Antoine's arms could be enough to help her now.

Maman is the first to speak. "You loved someone, didn't you?" And Marguerite's breath catches in her throat, her eyes flying open because how does Maman know? Did she sense it? Is it that obvious to the world what has happened? "You loved someone, and he died, didn't he?"

And Marguerite can only nod, tears trickling from her eyes to wet the smooth blue silk of Maman's bodice.

Maman sighs, and Marguerite feels dampness in her hair, and when Maman speaks again her voice is hoarse. "I'm sorry. Oh, darling, I'm so sorry. I won't—I won't press you for details. We don't need to talk about him until you're ready to. Oh, my poor girl. Just know that—know that I'm here, all right? I'll always be here."

Marguerite nods again, and Maman's lips are gentle against her forehead, and for a long time they lie like that, just holding each other, each lost in their own thoughts.

And hours have passed, slipped away, and Marguerite's voice is hoarse, her throat aching, when she finally whispers, "Edouard. His name was Edouard."

A/N: So I'm not wholly happy with how this chapter turned out, but a slight part of me thinks that's because I've read it too many times.

As ever, I hope you've enjoyed it, and please leave a review.

The last proper chapter will be posted on Wednesday, but I'm not saying anything that happens in it. Partly because it needs a little bit of work, and partly because I'm very attached to it.