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kcrabb88 · 6 years

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In a Mirror Dimly

Summary: Enjolras and Valjean bond at the barricade, discussing love and something they share in common. Written for Ace Mis Week 2019.

Note: Aromanticism and asexuality definitely overlap here! That’s my personal experience/orientation, so that comes naturally for me when writing about ace things. Also, the title is a reference to a verse from 1 Corinthians. Thanks to @aflamethatneverdies and @librarianladyx for beta’ing!

Valjean knows he shouldn’t get attached to these boys.

Because these boys will probably be dead soon.

Young men, he corrects himself, because they’re not children. But he has a habit of making any youth a child in his head.

He can’t help but feel fatherly toward them.

Perhaps he can convince them to run? Then again, maybe not. And how could he lead them through the dark of Paris unnoticed, even if he got them out?

Surrender? He flinches, digging his fingernails into his palms. That might mean prison. He swallows, unwilling to imagine these vibrant young men under that weight.

He looks over, seeing the one called Enjolras whisper something in Combeferre’s ear, a soft smile sliding onto the chief’s face.

He remembers seeing the tear running down the lad’s cheek after he shot the artillery sergeant. He remembers watching him step away for a moment and take a deep breath, because there isn’t time for grief.

Not here.

Enjolras brushes a stray strand of astonishing fair hair out of his eyes, not yet noticing Valjean studying him. Paris feels dark in this space before true daylight comes, clouds sweeping across the sky as a slice of blue edges into the black night, just a hint of red lingering on the horizon. There’s no light from the usual window lanterns, the few they have near the barricade emitting a dull yellow haze. The scent of gun smoke lingers in the air, never allowing Valjean to forget where he is.

He’d sensed the revolt in the air for weeks, months, before he heard news of the barricades today, but France has been roiled so many times since his birth that he can never tell when a spark will turn into something or when it won’t. The revolution was in progress when he was shipped to Toulon, and he remembers hearing news of the changes inside France: the revolution ending, Napoleon’s coup, and years later, his disastrous defeat in Russia. Then, Waterloo.

Nothing changed inside the bagne.

Valjean’s surprised when he glances up and sees Enjolras looking at him.

Then walking toward him.

“I was grateful for your help with the mattress to block the grapeshot, citizen,” Enjolras says as he approaches. “And for your bravery in giving your uniform to send another man away. My friends and I are thankful.”

Always citizen, rather than monsieur. Valjean’s intrigued again, even if he doesn’t quite know what to say. He can’t really say why exactly he’s here, though he’d heard Marius say I know him, so what might the other men here suspect? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps that Marius has only seen him in the street.

He realizes how much he’s used to keeping secrets. Always secrets, because he carries Toulon with him everywhere. The secrets grew heavier when he tore up his yellow passport and became someone else, when he took the bishop’s silver and started a new life. But with his secrets he also gained a sort of freedom. The freedom to be someone other than Jean Valjean and the damage that name carries with it. He’s only Jean Valjean at night, when he’s alone with his scars. Wearing another name gives him the chance to help others. It gives him the chance to love his daughter.

Valjean folds his hands together, praying he can get Cosette’s young man out of here even as the National Guard gets closer and daylight breaks into the night, the first hints of dawn reaching the barricade. He recalls Enjolras’ words from the speech he gave not long ago, the words cutting into Valjean’s heart because he doesn’t want these young men to die.

We are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn.

Enjolras sits down on the paving stones, the first strains of morning light creeping toward his feet through the shadows as if drawn to him. The glow casts his youth into relief and washes the gravity from his face, the knowledge that this lad might perish—and soon—making Valjean’s chest ache. Smudges of gunpowder stain Enjolras’ hands black in places, but he’s bafflingly free of even a small injury.

“Do you have anyone worrying over you at home?” Valjean asks, because he doesn’t know what to say. He so often feels like he doesn’t know what to say, only what to do.

Enjolras pulls his gaze away from the sunrise. “My parents are at home in Marseilles, but hopefully they aren’t worrying yet because news won’t have reached them.”

“No wife or children like those men you sent home?”

Valjean wonders if there’s any way he might convince Enjolras to go home. He looks barely more than seventeen or so, even if he must be a good bit into his twenties. Valjean isn’t opposed to the politics, because he knows just how desperate so many people are, right now. How desperate they’ve been for years. He understands the inequalities and the cholera and the poverty. Those were the things he was trying to fix, in Montreuil, before it all went wrong. Those are the things he wants to help alleviate now, where he can, person by person.

But he doesn’t want these young men dying over this. He wants them to find another way, because there’s enough death in these streets already.

Enjolras smiles, possibly catching onto to Valjean’s motives. “No. I have never been very interested in romance or the…” red creeps into his cheeks, and Valjean suspects he doesn’t blush often. “…the other activities my friends occupy themselves with. So no mistress waiting, either.”

Valjean shifts the gun resting between his knees. “Too busy wanting to change the world?”

Enjolras runs a hand through his over-long fair hair, and the small movement makes Fantine appear in Valjean’s mind with a flash of vibrant, tangible memory, her golden hair cut short and ruined by the cruel edge of a knife. All these years later and he still aches over the fact that he couldn’t save her.

He probably can’t save all these boys either, only the one he’s come for, the one his daughter loves, and it hurts.

Truth be told he doesn’t even know if he can save Marius.

Even in the last excruciating moments, there had been hope in Fantine’s eyes, hope that she might see her daughter again. Even as she died, Valjean saw the life in her bursting at the seams with nowhere to go. He never had the chance to know Fantine, just as he won’t ever know Enjolras, but despite their differences in circumstance and age and gender, he recognizes the same radical, indestructible hope in both of them. In Fantine’s last days he sensed that she was never just surviving, but always looking for the tiniest fragment of joy in the dark, even if she was only holding on by her fingernails. He senses that same spirit in Enjolras, watching it shimmer in the air around them like a living thing.

If he could, he would give some of his years back to Fantine, so she could see her daughter again.

He would give some to these lads, too, and save them from the bullets awaiting them on the other side of the barricade.

But he can’t.

Enjolras’ voice draws him back toward the moment at hand, every second feeling precious, because death’s shadow creeps over the barricade even as the orange-red glow of the sunrise bursts over the Parisian skyline. “That is always time consuming, but my friends also find plenty of hours in the day for both their mistresses and their politics. I suppose I never felt the impulse.”

“I thought I heard one of your friends teasing and saying you were rather intrepid for a man who had no woman he loved,” Valjean says, finding himself talking more with Enjolras than he does with most people other than Cosette. “But I thought perhaps they just might not know that you did.”

Enjolras laughs softly, but there’s grief within the sound. “Oh, no. I keep no secrets from my friends. We are a family, after all. Bound together by love of the same cause, and years of friendship.” Enjolras’s voice cracks ever so slightly, his words growing heavy.

“You’ve lost good friends today.” Valjean almost clasps Enjolras on the shoulder, but he isn’t sure if the touch would be welcome, so he refrains, for now. “Not just compatriots.”

“Two of the best men I knew.” Enjolras glances over at Courfeyrac, Feuilly, Combeferre, Bossuet, and Joly, who stand nearby, a gleam of deep love in his eyes. “Bahorel and Prouvaire. Bahorel had a laugh you could never forget, and a formidable loyalty to those he chose as his own. Prouvaire had an absolutely astonishing soul, and poetry that could make any man cry, even if I don’t understand the finer points of the art form.” Enjolras touches his undone cravat, a bright-red against the more muted colors of the rest of his clothing. Perhaps a gift from the friends he mentioned. Then, his voice goes deeper, a dangerous anger puncturing the words. “Some of the national guardsmen executed Prouvaire point blank. It’s why I’m afraid the police inspector inside will meet his end here.”

Valjean tenses at that, Javert’s presence is a problem for him in a million ways even as he wishes to get him out of here unscathed. Javert is a thorn in his side. Javert could turn him in. Javert keeps turning up, and yet Valjean doesn’t want to see him killed. A strange sympathy for the police inspector wells up in Valjean’s chest, a sympathy of which he doesn’t entirely understand the root.

“I’m sure some people find it odd,” Enjolras continues, his words holding the ring of a confession. “My lack of a mistress or interest in marriage. But I have all I need with my friends.”

Valjean pauses, hesitant to share anything about himself with anyone, the instinct ingrained so deeply within him he doesn’t know how to undo it. He’s afraid to undo it.

“I understand.” Valjean speaks the words before he’s ready, but he does understand, and it’s almost a relief to hear Enjolras make his own admission. Their lives are very different, but that feeling is the same. “I have a daughter, you see. Not my blood, but…” Valjean trails off for a moment, an image of Fantine coughing until her whole body shook overtaking his memory. “…but my own nevertheless. The life I’ve led has never truly offered me the opportunity for marriage and the like, but then again I also haven’t found I desired any of that. So I don’t find it odd at all, if you want the opinion of an old man.”

Concern floods Enjolras’ face, his eyes widening in alarm. “You have a daughter and yet you gave yourself up for another man to leave? I didn’t know…I…” Enjolras is inarticulate now, and it’s a far cry from the beautiful ease of his earlier speech, the words he spoke to the crowd like a hymn caught in the wind. Valjean remembers how those words sunk into his old soul, watching as the flames of hope came alive in the eyes of the men surrounding him. Not hope for their own lives, necessarily, but hope for the future they all believe in.

Valjean does clasp Enjolras’ shoulder now. “Easy, lad. I know what I’m doing. I’ll be all right.”

Enjolras frowns, the earlier gravity returning. “I am far from certain that any of us are going to be all right, I’m afraid. I hate to see your daughter lose you. I’m sure she needs you.”

“I’ll be all right,” Valjean repeats.

He cannot say I faked my own death to escape a prison ship. He cannot say I once snuck into a convent by hiding in a coffin. He cannot say I have been through stranger things, and somehow survived. He’s honestly not sure if he will survive. But he has to try. He has to try to get Cosette’s young man back to her. Even if it means losing her, Valjean wants her happiness. She deserves her happiness. She deserves more than an old man like him.

Valjean’s eyes flick to Marius for the briefest of moments, and it doesn’t go unnoticed by Enjolras. Enjolras looks at Marius and back at Valjean again, some kind of recognition flashing in his face that he doesn’t voice.

“I don’t suppose there’s any way I can convince you and your friends to leave the barricade?”

Valjean speaks before Enjolras can, hardly knowing what he’s saying.

A sad smile graces Enjolras’ features as the sun comes up fully over the barricade, gold dripping from the ends of his hair when the light strikes him.

“We will not surrender. My friends and I will do this together as we have so many other things in our lives these past years. We will survive together, or we will not.”

There’s a finality in Enjolras’ words among the grief and the hope and the unshakeable love Valjean hears.

“That kind of family is a beautiful thing to possess,” Valjean says, his words turning tremulous, and he clears his throat against the wave of emotion crashing over him. “That kind of family, and something to believe in.”

Enjolras blinks, wiping away a stray tear falling from his eye. “Those two things are all I have ever needed. Perhaps some might say that my lack of a mistress means I do not love, but that is not the truth.” Enjolras glances over at his friends again, and then at the sun casting the barricade in a golden glow, the light of a new day dawning. The dawn of the sixth of June. “I love so much I feel it might burst out of me at any moment. And sometimes it does.”

“I understand.” Valjean stands up at the same time as Enjolras, putting out his hand for the lad to shake. “I truly do.”

Enjolras accepts the handshake, his hand warm with life and kindness. “I hope that you find your way back to your daughter, citizen. Her name is?”

“Cosette,” Valjean says, something powerful filling him up as he says his child’s name, even more determined to get the Pontmercy boy back to her. He has never felt the kind of romantic feelings for someone like she possesses for that young man, but he does know what it is to deeply love, because she taught him.

“Cosette,” Enjolras repeats, handling the name with care. “Thank you for sharing a piece of yourself with me. It’s always nice to share something in common with someone when you didn’t expect it.”

Valjean nods, letting go of Enjolras’ hand. “It is. Thank you for talking with an old man.”

Enjolras smiles again before going back over to Combeferre and Courfeyrac, who each put an arm around him.

There’s still the matter of Javert inside the Corinthe. There’s still the matter of getting Cosette’s young man out of here. There’s still the matter of surviving long enough to do that. But Valjean marvels at the life on this barricade that is so obviously destined to end in death.

He marvels at the love all around him.

More words from Enjolras’ speech echo in his head, louder than the footsteps of the soldiers and the cannon fire on the other side of this chaotic, mismatched pile of wood that is the only thing standing between them and eternity.

Whence shall arise the shout of love, if it be not from the summit of sacrifice?

#Ace Mis Week #My fic #Enjolras #Valjean #Canon era #Les Miserables #Les Mis #Ace things

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