[and now, with ghosts]
this one's a crossover; in gratitude for @bricktober and frevtober this year, and all the wonderful art and writing i was able to enjoy, and all the prompts to help me get back to writing as i am recovering from months of burning myself out
this one's late, but ghosts can be sorely needed more than one night of a year.
Courfeyrac was wondering whether this was an appropriate time to compose a letter. He’d have to assume that the words would remain legible in the rain, and mud, and a fair likelihood of blood as well; not to mention finding someone amiable enough to present it to the addressee.
On top of it, he couldn’t think of anyone whose life would be improved by receiving his last words anyway. Everyone who’d miss him the most were within calling distance, except Enjolras, who had gone to check the streets. As for his family, well -
“How could one explain this to family anyway, even if one cared to do so?” Courfeyrac muttered under his breath, kicking a rock into a nearby alley.
“I’ve never found the words, myself,” suddenly said a man, smiling at Courfeyrac from below. “Somehow, they were able to understand more than I anticipated. That’s about the one thing I miss. How easy it was to just go back to them, to pretend that it was my life too. Though I can’t complain. I’ve been able to watch over them for nearly forty years by now.”
Courfeyrac looked at the man, who was sitting in the wheelchair, and felt his stomach drop as he recognized his face.
Well, Courfeyrac was known for being able to carry a conversation at all times, and he wasn’t going to stop now.
Only he’d never before had a conversation partner who’d been, by all accounts, dead for a good few decades.
That said, the last two days had been feeling somewhat less than real, as if they were rushing to become pages in history that he’d never get a chance to read, much less to edit.
Courfeyrac wondered whether this man, - whether Georges Couthon, damn it - had been feeling this way too, forty years ago.
“Delighted to make your acquaintance,” Courfeyrac bowed low and took off his hat to make an extravagant swipe. “I hope you find our revolution satisfactory.”
Couthon returned the greeting with equal flourish.
“Perfectly adequate,” he remarked with mock gravity. “Of course, the fact that there is another monarchy to be toppled does not give you much credit, but then, it is hardly your personal failing.”
“To what do I owe your visit?”
“I – we – offer – our assistance, such as it might be,” – Couthon’s ghost made a broad gesture towards the barricades. “It may seem a hard price, to give up one’s future... But your names will survive.”
“I doubt anyone will remember my name,” Courfeyrac’s grin was brief this time. “Not like yours.”
“Even so, I might be the least memorable of us too. The most replaceable, the most expendable. Just another seat at the table, another signature on a document.”
Couthon shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter. We all gave equally – what we could, night after night, until our bodies gave way, whether by force or our own health crumbling. Except that, I suppose, some of us refused to stop even then.”
“And not in vain,” Courfeyrac heard a note of resignation in Couthon’s voice, and felt a sudden urge to protect this...ghost, as if ghosts needed anyone’s protection, but that did not deter him in the least. “We’re proof of it enough, don’t you think? We wouldn’t be here, without you.”
“You are well versed in means of flattering an old and worn-out specter,” Couthon had regained his former tone, now with just barely concealed amusement. “Is there anything I could tell you, though? I wish we could do more than –”
Well. Courfeyrac hadn’t told this to Enjolras, nor to Combeferre – in the end, he just did not feel like facing that bright, implacable conviction, nor, worse, a knowing sort of explanation.
“Will it hurt?” he asked.
“Dying?” Couthon spread his arms. “Not really, not the death itself. What happens right before,” he shuddered, – “that might be brutal – it was for me – but then, you’re healthy and all they have is bullets, it will come quick enough. I wouldn’t expect to have time for any last words if I were you.”
Courfeyrac belatedly remembered the circumstances of Couthon’s execution, and considered apologizing for bringing it up, but Couthon’s ghost seemed remarkably nonchalant.
“I suppose I’d better get back, though” Courfeyrac said. “They may just need someone to make an amusing remark.”
“They rely on you for far more than that, and you know it,” Couthon’s ghost wheeled alongside Courfeyrac, past Feuilly, who was deep in a heated argument with another ghostly figure.
This one, short and dressed in tatters, with a yellow headscarf, would’ve seemed to have stepped right out of David’s painting, except that he was decidedly less statuesque, gesturing so emphatically that his finger kept repeatedly passing through Feuilly’s shoulders.
Vivent les pe – was written on the wall.
“Absolutely not,” Courfeyrac heard Feuilly’s voice rise in indignation. “You of all people! You didn’t call yourself a friend of Parisians only, did you?”
The ghost cackled in sheer delight and attempted to hug Feuilly, only for his arms to go straight through the body and the barricade both.
“You pass the test,” he said. “Now finish what you have started to write there, and I assure you it won’t be in vain. You can term it supernatural prescience, if you wish, but it’s just experience really. Comes after a few decades of sticking around.”
Courfeyrac couldn’t make out the words in Feuilly’s response, but Feuilly’s tone, playful and sarcastic by halves, said more than words could have. He hadn’t heard Feuilly speak like that in months; not since the beginning of the epidemic.
Speaking of the epidemic...here he was, still wearing a doctor’s apron, even though all the injuries of the day had been accounted for.
Combeferre was bent over a hastily drawn map, head side by side with another one, which was mostly transparent, and wearing a perfectly coiffed and powdered wig.
Towering over the slight figure, Combeferre shot a single glance at Courfeyrac, followed by a smile so bright that Courfeyrac had to blink a few times to keep his eyes from watering.
“Let them talk,” Couthon said. “Time comes in fits and starts, we don’t get to live through the years like you do, and once we do come about, it’s hard to find someone who can explain both the political situation, and that in the hearts of the people.”
“Combeferre is bound to have no end of questions of his own,” Courfeyrac softly said. “And I think, you’ve achieved it already, what you came here for.”
“Even so, it’s a pity we can’t hold a gun side by side with you.”
“Well, you’ve fought more than enough battles already, and not that you’d know how to shoot one of our guns anyway. Speaking of which – I don’t suppose you’re interested in how they work; look –“
Courfeyrac was deep in the explanation when Enjolras returned.
The face of Enjolras was as serene as if he were taking a stroll in a park. Courfeyrac had just barely caught a tall, uniformed figure behind him, who raised his hand towards the barricades in a salute and stepped straight through the wall into the nearest house.
“Right, I have to go,” Couthon said apologetically. “Chances are, we will see each other again tonight.”
---
“I told you,” Couthon said, reaching his hand toward Courfeyrac, who had just tried to take a breath and realized that his lungs weren’t working anymore. “It doesn’t really hurt. Only the heart, I suppose.”
Courfeyrac grabbed the offered hand, but kept his eyes on the attack. It wasn’t over yet.
“You may, of course, not want to stick around either,” Couthon continued, unfazed that he wasn’t getting any response. “Even though I can’t quite tell you what the alternative is, and I would surely miss your company.”
Inside the Corinthe, another gathering was taking place.
“You have t-to help me,” a ghost of a man with disheveled black hair kept pacing in front of a fireplace, repeatedly forgetting himself and passing straight through an upturned chair.
“Where did you come from?” Marat asked, grinning widely in the middle of the carnage.
“Same as t-the rest of you, only – I wanted to, to t-talk to you, all of you, but, but I c-couldn’t stay, I went to the North, and then there were all these p-people…”
He was cut off by another voice, soft and clear.
“You’ve been helping them too.”
“Yes, Maxime, of c-course I have, and I am s-so sorry, and –“
“Desmoulins, we don’t have time for this,” a ghost in full military uniform and holding a feathered hat in his hand cut through the garbled apology. “I have to go. He will not stand alone.”
“Yes, exactly, c-can you help me. Please. This one, he needs to wake up. Can we wake him?”
“He appears to be drunk out of his senses.”
“He needs to wake up!”
“Why? If he doesn’t, he might survive this yet,” Marat dryly noted.
“B-because it will be too late. He’ll be haunted b-by regrets, and that is -,” the speaker froze halfway through the step, shuddering, “worse than d-death. Trust me.”
“Camille.”
“Help me. Wake up, you – will you please wake up!”
Camille was cursing, tears running down his face, when the rest of the company joined him in trying to coax the sleeper awake.
For a moment, the gunfire stopped.
The man slowly lifted his head from the table, blinking at the light. Without the slightest hesitation, he stood up and walked towards the soldiers.
“Long live the Republic!”, he said. “I am one of them."
